Fruit of the Fig Tree

Between the Rock and hard place

2012-02-07T08:14:00.000-08:00

by Donna Diorio

I just read an Op-Ed on one of the most popular Israeli newspapers. Online it is Ynet. The article is Israel and the Christians and it discusses why the ultra-Orthodox Haredim are wrong to oppose all Christian help for Israel saying,

"...devout Protestants were advocating the restoration of a Jewish State with Jerusalem as its capital long before Theodor Herzl." And, "...to label all pro-Israel Christians as “missionaries”, as haredi group Yad L’Achim is saying, is not accurate."

But here is where this 'liberal' Jewish attitude puts pro-Israel Christians between the Rock and the hard place:

"Certainly, some US Evangelicals would like to convert Jews, and Israel must fight them. However, the vast majority simply wants to bless Israel because that is what they believe is the right thing to do."

The Jewish writer goes on to conclude:

"Israel’s leaders urgently need to set up a moral platform rejecting the “Judeo-Christian” blend, which theologically fuses Jews and Christians together without protecting the Jewish faith and maintaining Israel as an independent single-faith Jewish community. But the Bible teaches also that if there is the “gentile” who is jealous and aggressive (Amalek), there is also a “Righteous gentile” who is admiring and willing to help (Jethro.)"

So what is the dilemma for Christians who love Israel? You are being asked to reject "Jewish Christians" or Messianic Jews to retain good standing with Israel.

This writer and many of the Jewish organizations that work with Israel-supporting Christians say they will not work with anyone who supports evangelism among Jews.

I personally believe that it is not the biggest issue at stake for Israel-supporting Christians to say they will not attempt to evangelize Jews in Israel because Israeli Jewish believers are the best witness of Messiah Yeshua anyway, not Christians. It is illegal for non-Jewish Christians to act as missionaries in Israel, but Jewish believer-Israeli citizens are free to share their faith.

What is the important issue at stake is the willingness of pro-Israel Christians to deny relationship with the Jewish believers in Jesus in order to maintain their relationships with Israeli organizations. That decision puts such Christians at odds with the Head of the Body of Messiah in Israel, who is, of course, Jesus.

Do you understand that it is a popular teaching that the Messianc Jews of Israel and the Christians who support them are enemies of Jews? They are called "Amalek," a hated enemy of Israel. Exodus 17:16 notes that, "Because the LORD has sworn: the LORD will have war with Amalek from generation to generation." Additionally, it was King Saul’s failure to “utterly destroy” Amalek that triggered God to tear the kingdom out of Saul’s hand and to anoint David for kingship.

For Jews of our day to equate Messianic Jewish believers and the Christians who support them as “Amalek” is an extremely serious sign of the depth of anti-christ (anti-messiah) spirit at work. The apostle Paul was not just using hyperbole when he said that those who think in this way are “enemies of the gospel.”

In contrast, Christians who are willing to "bless Israel" without understanding that salvation is the ultimate blessing for ALL, including Jews, these are called "righteous Jews" by unsaved Jews.

The Rock and the hard place decision here is summed up in this: "For they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God." John 12:43

Too many Christians tell themselves that their good works are making Israel jealous of the Christian faith, but isn't that just wishful thinking? I've seen enough comments of the anti-missionary activists in Israel to know that what really makes them jealous is any type of Christian support of the Jewish believers in Messiah Yeshua in Israel, and any kind of favor among men that God grants them whether in the courts, on the job, among their neighbors, in the military, in the media and in the public opinion. These are the ONLY places I have witnessed "jealousy" of the faith emerging in unsaved Jews.

I relate to the desire of non-Jewish Christians to be a part of blessing Israel as the scriptures mandate. Finding the narrow path that truly does bless Israel is where we end up between the Rock and the hard place.

The apostle Paul staked out the narrow way that we must walk between the Rock and hard place with the Jewish people: As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sakes. Romans 11:28

We have to comprehend the election of God is still in force upon the Jewish people – and many will ultimately respond by receiving the gift of salvation in Yeshua. At the same time it is a NECESSITY to grasp that this people we love in conscience toward God – namely Israel – are also enemies of the gospel.

If the narrow path between the Rock and the hard place was easy to find everyone would be walking it.

Ariel Sharon, A Lion Sleeps & Rabbi Kaduri's Prediction

2012-01-04T15:05:00.000-08:00

Ariel Sharon, A Lion Sleeps
& Rabbi Kaduri's Prediction

Thisweek I got an email from a spiritually astute friend in Jerusalem who wasreminding that today, Jan 4^th, is six years to the day that ArielSharon fell into coma on January 4^th 2006. His article was, SIX YEARS: THE LIONCONTINUES TO SPEAK.

Ifyou remember back, when Ariel Sharon fell into a coma many Christians and Jews –saved and unsaved, in the nations and in Israel – said it was the punishment ofGod for “dividing the Land” in the Disengagement of Gaza. I personally do not believe that, but my purpose is not to stir up an old controversy which I don’t believe can be reconciled in arguing among ourselves.

I do agree with the prayer request this brother issued in his discussion of Sharon’s continuing life in a coma, and that is:

*That revelation and interpretation would be given to the Body of Messiah in Israel as to what the Spirit is saying to the Congregations through the phenomenon, perhaps "sign", of Sharon's endurance after these six years.

Also, with my experience over the last year after our grandson’s near fatal accident that left him in a coma for many weeks and in vegetative state for weeks after that, I am certain that even in these states the Holy Spirit of God is able to commune with a person – spirit to spirit. There is no other explanation for the God-consciousness that our grandson emerged from his deep sleep with that has remained with him as his sever brain trauma has been healing miraculously. So I also agree with this man’s prayer for the soul of Ariel Sharon – that he receive the Messiah – and that the revelation also extend to Ariel Sharon’s two sons who attend him, Omri and Gilad.

In relation to Ariel Sharon, there is also a video that is making the rounds in believer circles about the now deceased Kabbalist Rabbi Kaduri who is said to have named the Messiah before his death as Yehoshua or Yeshua. In the video that is circulating, Kaduri is said to make the prediction that when Ariel Sharon died that the Messiah would come.

I don’t know about all that, but I do have a word of caution for those who are receiving Kaduri’s words as a valid prophecy from God. It is this:

First, I believe I need to caution my friends about investing too much interest in what Rabbi Kaduri may or may not have said concerning Yeshua and His return. Christians place FAR TOO MUCH interest in what the unsaved rabbis say than in the gospel that is going forth in Israel through the SAVED REMNANT.

Now, I am not saying that Rabbi Kaduri did not have some revelation of the identity of Yeshua, BUT I ABSOLUTELY CAUTION you against receiving a prophetic date setting of Messiah's return based on the word of a Kabbalist rabbi who did not come out of the closet about his faith in an open way, and even in a closed way only a year after his death!

There is a very UNHEALTHY interest in Christian circles with unsaved rabbis. We believe for them to be saved, but we don't hang on their every word and fund their projects - even their projects to rebuild the temple. This is such a dangerous trap!

God can use anyone He wants to speak to us - and when He uses something or someone like an unsaved rabbi or even a donkey, it is generally because we have not listened to HIS voice, or those true prophets He has sent to us. So He has to pick the most surprising and unlikely source to get our attention. That is what I think may be happening here.

For years I have heard reports tickling the believers' ears about secret rabbis who believe in Yeshua. Some lying people have even declared they met them, only to be exposed later to have made it all up for their own renown. I am just cautious about secret believers. Until they come out, I don't know what good they are doing the kingdom of the LORD.

Caveat emptor. If you are buying into this report about Kaduri, then "Let the buyer beware."

A Worthy Word from Israeli Messianic Jew, Arni Klien

2011-08-19T12:09:00.000-07:00

This word was sent out in the prayer letter of Arni and Yonit Klien, who have a prayer and worship ministry in the Judean Hills, called Emmaus Way. There are so many many good words in this writing that I asked permission to share it more publicly than just to my subscribers. Be blessed as you read.

Three lies were planted in the Garden of Eden.
They sit at the root of every spiritual struggle of faith we face in life.

by Arni Klein
July 2011
Israel

Receiving Our Gift

From time to time we read about breakthrough discoveries in science or technology that end up making a real difference in people’s lives. Sometimes researchers work for years and years in search of such keys. Other times we seem to just stumble onto great things…by the providence and promise of God. Israel continues to be a light and a blessing to the nations in so many ways.

You would think that with all the contributions and discoveries made by Jews that have dramatically affected the quality of life of so many, the people of the nations would be grateful, and we (Jews) would have a deep sense of accomplishment. Well, at the moment this is not our present reality.

While thinking about this, it occurred to me that many of us don’t recognize the gift we have to give, or perhaps to say, the gift we have been made to be. The system of this world conditions us to think so competitively and comparatively that unless we are the greatest something or other, we often tend to think we have nothing to offer.

This thought come out of a personal moment I find myself in concerning the seminars I have been presenting over the past year in Germany. I am amazed and blessed by how deeply people are being touched by the Lord.

As some of you know, I have been working on these teachings and sharing them in bits and pieces for a long time – about twenty-five years. In one part of me I am convinced that the insights that make up these messages are from God. But another part of me has had a struggle to accept having something that is not common to all and is really a blessing to others.

Can you relate to this? Having the feeling I am not alone in this, I felt to share this bit of my process.

A Piece of the Puzzle

On my last trip (to Germany), a new piece of the puzzle concerning the teaching came into view.

Three lies were planted in the Garden of Eden. They sit at the root of every spiritual struggle of faith we face in life.

In speaking out against God so openly and freely, the serpent insidiously came against God’s omnipotence. (Let us not forget that the serpent was more subtle or cunning than any beast of the field). By the fact that God did nothing to stop the serpent from implying such a negative thing about Him, Adam and Eve were subtly given the sense that God is not over the serpent and therefore not all-powerful.

Next came the not-so-subtle implication about God’s word. The serpent said, “He said you would die, but you won’t.” In other words He is not to be believed.

Lastly, in that He won’t let you eat from that one special tree, He is withholding from you the best part.

The three lies are: God is not all-powerful, He is a liar, and He doesn’t love or really care about you.

Here comes the new part: Each module of the seminar rests on the revelation Name God gave along with each of the three covenants He made with Israel. These names, and the characteristic demonstrated through each, are His answer to satan’s three attacks against His character and nature.

• El Shaddai is almighty, all-powerful, all Abraham would ever need.
• Moses received the Torah from Yahweh – I Am That I Am – the unchanging One Whose word never fails.
• The new covenant reveals Yeshua, the savior, who held nothing back, proved God’s love, in Whom we have the Kingdom.

When we come to know God in each of these three dimensions, there is nothing satan can do to shake us from our foundation. The seminars are designed to help us see - in the light of God’s ways - where He is and where we are, so that we can become all He has called us to be, unto the revelation of His glory in Israel and the nations.

I don’t know if this adequately conveys to you our amazement at the completeness of this picture we are looking at.

While the process remains a lifelong endeavor and there are still no short cuts outside of embracing the Cross, the simplicity and clarity of it all blows our mind. The fullness of life is to be found in knowing God according to these three covenant Names.

The Going Forth

Seven years ago we began writing and speaking about the special calling on the third/fourth generation (after the Holocaust).

Since then we have been waiting for the Lord to release His heart cry to the youth of Germany. We sense the time has come to gather together the different groups and individuals from around Germany with whom we have been in touch, for a time of fellowship, exchange, and impartation.

To that end, our friends at TOS Ministries in Tubingen will be hosting a gathering on February 4th-5th of next year (2012). We will be writing more about this in the days to come, but wanted to alert all who might be interested to mark these dates on their calendars.

We are excited about this being in Tubingen for several reasons. Firstly, we have been bonded with TOS since our first days in Germany and deeply admire the depth and sincerity of heart they walk in. They have invested heavily in the relationship between Israel, the Jewish people, and Germany and have been true pioneers in the quest to bring reconciliation and healing to those affected by the Holocaust in Israel, Germany, Europe and the rest of the world as well.

The university in Tubingen was the womb for the marriage between religion and secular humanism and was consequently foundational to the formation of Nazi ideology. Please pray for this generation to take their place in God’s plans and purposes.

Calling to the Men

We have recently come in contact with a group of men that are regularly gathering throughout Germany to spend hours and sometimes days simply adoring the Lord with no agenda. (We trust you realize how uncharacteristic this is of the German soul structure, and especially among men).

In May, while they were with us in Nes Harim, I had a dream. In it I had been ministering in another land (which I understood to be Germany) and was on my way to return home to Israel when I was approached by a multitude of men wanting to relate about the word I had just shared. Their number was simply astounding. It reminded me of the hidden seven thousand in Elijah’s day.

The Lord impressed me that there are many men in Germany ready to walk in a new way...to come before the Lord with no agenda… to wait on Him and relate with one another in a new way. Please pray for the call of the Spirit to be heard that men no longer walk according to the spirit of the sons of Greece but become true sons of Zion.

Grass Roots

More and more we are convinced that the change we long for – the release of the Spirit – the abiding manifestation of the Lord's Presence – will be the result of a grassroots movement of simple people committed to laying their hearts and lives before the Lord and one another.

For decades the western church has looked to big ministries and large conferences for the long-awaited breakthrough. Since we moved to Israel nearly twenty years ago, our perceptions, expectations, and understandings have been dramatically altered. Coming from a thriving congregation of over two thousand in the US, it took awhile for us to understand that bigger was not better, and that as nice as gifts were, they were not what drew God close.

As we wrote above, our minds are being blown by the simplicity of the Lord’s ways. It is hard to grasp how little we need to do to fulfill the desires of His heart.

In the face of ever-encroaching darkness, many are desperately searching for an answer. Are we in fact searching for something that is right in front of us? Could it be we know it so well that we no longer see it? Might we speak it so often that we no longer hear it? It was there when Moses lifted his hands in the midst of the battle. It was there when Jehoshaphat turned his face away from the enemy. It was always before King David. It cannot be learned, it cannot be taught or given from one to another. It’s not a purpose to be accomplished. It’s not a system to be replaced or a structure to be renewed. It’s not new. We talk about it, write about it, and sing about it. When we really find it we lose all our questions. The 'it' of course, is Him.

There’s an infinite difference between looking for something to do and being the dwelling place of God.

Do we know? Do we really know what it means to enter and abide in His http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifreshttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gift? How long can we wait? How long can we be still? http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

The answer to these last questions might be a good measure of how well we know Him.

Arni & Yonit Klein, Emmaus Way in Nes Harim in the Judean Hills
Kleinfax prayer letter
For information on making a contribution

When the love of many waxes cold

2011-08-12T17:37:00.000-07:00

I wrote this on a Facebook NOTE this morning but for some reason it has been blocked so no one can see it but me. Must be something worth reading.

I was arrested by the words quoted by Messianic Evan Thomas this week in his prayer perspective from Netanya, Israel.

Referencing the current Israeli housing demonstrations, Etgar Keret, one of Israel's leading journalists recently wrote in HaAretz,

"The fight will be 100-percent Israeli, blue and white. And it, as many of the signs at the demonstration noted, is the battle over the home – not just in the sense of the mortgages and housing prices, but also in the deeper sense of the word, "home," as the place where you feel wanted and valued and to which you feel connected. Our country has long since lost all sense of solidarity and mutual responsibility, replacing them with the only common denominator that remains – the primordial fear of all that is different, the other. And each time a few lazy days of steamy summer go by without missiles, flotillas and any other existential angst-provoking events, we are forced to look at each other and rediscover that we forgot long ago what it is to be one people."

Kachol lavan - blue and white.

I just learned that Israeli motto-to-live-by recently, although I have seen the effects of it in operation for many years. Kachol lavan means Jews depending upon themselves alone. As one author explained it, it was a lesson learned from the Holocaust when the world stood by and saw Jews marched into the fire and did nothing. So instead of ever trusting anyone again to help them, many Israelis operate under the "kachol lavan" way of thinking: Israel can depend on no one to help but Israelis.

It is not so different from the thinking of any other person that has been abused in life. The capacity to love and trust others shrinks more and more as the years go by hardening into bitterness and unfulfilled revenge. No one - no matter how they might try to help is allowed to penetrate the hard shell that forms the encased heart of a wounded soul.

That is one reason that circumcision is a sign of the covenant - not just the circumcision of the foreskin, but the circumcision of the heart which is a sign of our spiritual covenant. In order to become a spiritual people of God, we have to allow the circumcision of our hearts. It is a process where the old, hardened encasing that we have wrongly believed will protect us from further hurts and wounds, is cut away so we can become human beings again - created in the image and likeness of God.

Most of the world is in a state of uncircumcised heart, and most of us who believe have parts of our hearts that still are in need of the hardness being cut away. Where there is no circumcised heart, there are people full of wounds and bitterness who believe they can't trust anyone to look out for them and it's every man for himself. Dog eat dog.

This is the lawlessness of the streets - and I don't condone it in the least, but I am saying that if we could allow a little compassion to creep into what we are seeing in the world today, as spiritual people we could begin to speak to those hardened hearts with new hope. They need salvation. They need Yeshua and the promise of a new heart whereby we are transformed from glory to glory.

I began this note talking about how Evan Thomas' prayer perspective this week was like a critical piece of a puzzle that was working in my spirit already. What Thomas saw in the journalist's statement he deeply identified with. As he wrote to me in a follow up, the journalist "had 'captured' something very important if we want to truly be able to intercede for this nation's peoples right now. I actually believe that there is something very similar going on in the hearts of people all over the Middle East at the moment." Evan was urging us in our intercession over Israel to consider how in the terrible rioting of the Arab nations surrounding Israel, many people are suffering greatly. He wrote:

"The third area of national focus of course is steadily rising tensions leading up to the unilateral declaration in the United Nations General Assembly of an independent Palestinian State. This is supposedly about to take place next month in September. The implications of this of course are huge. The nation is divided in its political position as is the Body of Messiah. ...
"Many voices in the Messianic Jewish community are deeply concerned about the theological implications of dividing the Land. Notwithstanding, Evan is concerned about the social implications of an independent State. Is it economically sustainable? What will it look like? Will it have its own armed security forces and will they represent a realistic threat to Israel's security? Will the Fatah party be strong enough to maintain a political balance or will the new State move towards radical Islam and Sh'ria law?

"How then shall we pray? Firstly, of course, as the Spirit of God leads. Nevertheless, please take into account that amongst our neighbors in Syria, Lebanon and Egypt there are many people suffering extreme hardship. Pray for the children, grieving the loss of fathers (and all-too-often mothers). Pray for families that have lost homes and fields and are struggling to put food on their tables. Pray for the general populations of these countries who are suffering from the sense of betrayal from their own governments.

"Remember that what happens across our borders affects Israel also. Destabilization can quickly lead to rapidly spreading conflict and in the Middle East we are all highly militarized nations with very little love for one another."

Whether we are speaking of embattled nations or spiritually embattled individuals, it is true that so much of the anger manifesting itself around us is simply because people are hopeless and without a saviour. They have given up on love in a very real sense and decided that whatever they get in this world they are going to have to take it for themselves. No one else can be counted on.

What the Israeli journalist Keret wrote about the Israeli housing demonstrations is as true applied to the chaotic streets of Arab nations and London even as it is also true of a troubled young relative of mine locked up in a hardness of heart from the wounds of a lifetime. Not that a lot of bad personal choices haven't been made along the way contributing to the state of such a person, but sometimes in order to catch a glimmer of compassion for those who are creating chaos, we need to consider those much closer to our hearts. We need to think in terms of someone we love who is also fighting futilely to depend only on themselves to survive in a harsh world.

Yeshua made it clear that He did not come into the world to save only the good, whole and righteous people who 'deserved' the blessings of His salvation. He said He came for the distressed, the abused, those whose hearts were sick with the hardness of life's wounds. Doesn't that sound like anyone you know, or maybe have read about or heard about in news reports?

One of the In Christ's Image Training teachings of Francis Frangipane is an interpretation of Matthew 24:12, "And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold." His reading of the verse is that it is possible for Christians to allow their hearts to grow cold because of exposure to so much wickedness and iniquity in the world. Isn't it so? Can't you think of several people in your life that you feel cold toward? Be honest with yourself.

We are certainly living in days where love has waxed cold in our world. This is cause and effect of iniquity, or lawlessness, that is abounding. It is a viscous circle. Not only does the abused become an abuser, but as people of God just being exposed to so much rampant lawlessness is able to rob us of our greatest defense - a warm, open and loving heart.

We have to guard our spiritually circumcised hearts from growing cold in love. How does a heart grow cold? It begins to harden. It may not harden against everyone, but begins to shut down warmth toward others. It begins to qualify who deserves our warm heart and who deserves only a serving of icy coldness. To keep our hearts circumcised with warm, living love these days, we have to have Yeshua's vision of people, not our own.

I am not saying we are suckers and that we do not take a realistic view of people. I'm not proposing that we excuse lawlessness, or the abused one that is abusing - but spiritually, we have to find the compassion to appeal to Heaven on their account. We have to become the good Samaritan who cannot just walk around the wretched, beaten up lives we encounter on the road.

I will also confess that I am saying this every bit as much to myself as I am to anyone who reads this note. The truth is that we are all being battered by the harshness of life. If it is not touching you, then it is likely touching someone that at one time you had a very warm heart for. The continual 'seduction' of harsh living conditions is the temptation to harden our hearts is always there.

The seduction is that when we harden our hearts toward someone that it will protect us from further receiving any further hurt from them. That's not the way it really works, but in fact that is the simple process of how an abused person becomes an abuser. Little by little the whole heart is taken over by hardness and the lack of love, that it morphs the person from being a victim into being a predator.

What is the answer then? Only Yeshua, only Jesus can cut away the hardness of our hearts, giving us a new heart. This was a major theme of the prophet Ezekiel:

Eze 18:31 Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel?

Eze 36:26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.

Eze 11:19 And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh:

If Yeshua's mission is our mission, then we too are in the world to seek that which is lost - that which is beaten down, hard-hearted and helpless to change anything in their rotten lives. Clearly our spiritual challenge is to make sure that we have not allowed hard heartedness to creep back in. Talk is cheap. It is easy to repeat all the Christianese love mottos; it is another thing to guard your heart with all diligence to keep a vision for the salvation of the world.

It is like the Ha'Aretz reporter said, "the battle over the home – not just in the sense of the mortgages and housing prices, but also in the deeper sense of the word, "home," as the place where you feel wanted and valued and to which you feel connected."That's the yearning every every human heart - whether they find it or not - to feel wanted and valued and connected in love.

One final thing keeps springing to memory in relation to these things and I think it is an great example of how we can let our hearts grow cold again even after Yeshua has given us a new heart.

Several years ago a prophecy was circulated that made its way to me. It was more pathetic than prophetic, but the prophet had many who defended this word.

The 'prophecy' was based on the biblical story of Abigail who was at first married to the rogue Nabal, who was struck down with a heart turned to stone. Abigail was then legally free of him and then married to David who was to become King. (1 Samuel 25) The prophecy was a word to encourage many women (and some men) that God was about to answer their desire for a godly spouse by striking down their own Nabal - a name that means "fool" or "folly" - so they could move on to a godly spouse worthy of them.

It is such a perfect example of cold love in a believer to me. Good grief - just get a divorce already! Do you honestly think that God is any more pleased with you sitting around fantasizing that your spouse is going to die so you can move on to a worthy, godly mate? That is a heaping helping of cold love - and the people who defended the prophecy could not discern the cold heartedness of it. I'm sure you can think of examples from your own experience. We know what cold love is, even though we don't want to recognize it in ourselves. It is much safer for us to get real about the cold love we still harbor in our heats because cold love is a real enemy to us in these days. Let's keep it real, but let's keep our hearts warm, too.

Blind Spots in the Body

2011-07-05T07:07:00.000-07:00

When Martin Luther emerged as a groundbreaking man of faith after nailing his 95 Theses on the door of the Church in 1517, he also believed that God would return salvation to the Jews. In 1514 Luther wrote:

"Conversion of the Jews will be the work of God alone operating from within, and not of man working — or rather playing — from without."

He had that partially right. We can't make anyone see if God has not given them eyes to see. God has to give the revelation to every man - Jew or Gentile - before they can see Jesus.

Luther was completely right that God would return salvation to the Jews. The last nine years of his life though, Luther had become a bitter Christian anti-Semite, penning his infamous treatise, On the Jews and Their Lies.

Apparently Luther came to resent the Jews for not appreciating his position advocating for them. I guess he expected the Jews to be more responsive to him because he was not antagonistic toward them for their rejection of Jesus.

He understood that salvation comes by a revelation of Yeshua that only God can give a person, but what Luther did not understand is that there is a plan of God in operation. In other words, a plan that has a specific time table.

The apostle Paul laid it out very clearly in Romans 9-11, but this plan is also a revelation that must be given by God. We cannot make anyone in the Church or elsewhere see what the plan of God is concerning the Jews, or the timing He has put on His plan which will ultimately see "all Israel" receive the revelation of their Messiah's identity.

What happened to Martin Luther is a little scary, isn't it?
He knew God was going to save the Jews, but allowed himself to become bitter over the Jews not doing so in his timing.

In his turning bitter toward the Jews in the last decade of his life, he really fulfilled the word of wisdom in Hebrews 12:15, "Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled."

How much of Christian history has been defiled by the bitterness that took root in Martin Luther against the Jews? He started out well, with an open heart but ended up bitter because his open heart did not unlock the closed hearts of the Jews. The time was not yet, but Luther did not have that revelation.

I wish I had a dollar for every time that after I shared my connection to praying with the Israeli Messianic Jews, and a Christian responded to me in alarm, "What about the Palestinians?" 'Yes, I know,' I explain. 'We pray for both the Jewish and the Arab believers in Israel.'

What I don't say is, 'Your exclusion of care and support for Israeli Jews is not my exclusion of care and support for the Palestinians believers. It isn't either/or, it is one new man in Messiah. Not that there isn't a lot of Palestinian-hatred expressed among Christian Israel supporters. That position is wicked too.

This is the fine line we walk as Christian supporters of Israel. Always a fine line because we are walking through one heck of spiritual minefield in every way. Israel is the center of the storm because the plan of God is being consummated here.

Some Christians don't believe God intends the salvation of Israel on a national scale. Other Israel-supporting Christians do not believe they have a part to play in the salvation of the Jews. The latter is a belief that Jewish salvation is something that God alone will accomplish - much like Martin Luther's quote in this opening - and that it will not occur until after all the Christians have been removed from the earth in the Rapture.

That is not what I believe because I see God is already pouring out the revelation of salvation by Yeshua to Jews. The salvation of the Jews has been occurring in an increasing manner that parallels the return of Jews to the Promised Land, the re-establishment of the State of Israel and the reunification of the capital, Jerusalem. It continues to increase even in the present as those radical enemies of God's Israel in neighboring states are being loosed from the short leash of secular dictators.

The Ezekiel vision of the Valley of Dry Bones was the prophetic picture God gave for what He has been doing in the return from exile of the Jews, as well as the spiritual restoration of Israel. It is a progression that unfolds as it is prophetically commanded on earth. (Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven) When the Church sees that this is the will of God and begins to speak into it like Ezekiel did.

There is a timing of the salvation of Israel and we are moving swiftly now through the rapids in the stream of time toward it.

Despite all that, half of the Christian church does not even believe God even has a plan that includes Israel's salvation. They do not view current events as the fury of the demonic unleashed upon the center of God's will in this season.

How they miss that is a mystery but they cannot recognize it as it is clearly imparted in the Scripture, nor are they able to see it in its fulfillment in real time. It is a revelation that is given by God. Don't let that word revelation scare you. It just means that God shares a nugget of His wisdom, knowledge and understanding with us so we can begin to grasp His love, His Word or His plan.

If God does not give us understanding, then no amount of teaching, preaching or debate will awaken us to the truth of the matter. And it does not matter if Christians are activists working exclusively for the plight of the Palestinian people, or if they are just apathetic toward the Jews denying there is any special purpose that God still has for them - classic replacement theology - there is no way "to make them" see His continued purposes for Israel. Only God can give a heart to see.

Deuteronomy 29:4 Yet the LORD hath not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day.

This was the state of the children of Israel in Moses time and throughout biblical history. God knew from the beginning that when the Messiah would walk among them, they would not be able to perceive Him BECAUSE God had foreordained it to be so. Romans 11:30-32:

For as you in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief:Even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy. For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.

Jesus also confirmed what Moses had declared of the children of Israel from the beginning:

Mat 13:15 For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.

Do you get that? Paul also said in Romans that "blindness in part has befallen Israel." Why? So through the Jews' unbelief, God could widen the net of His catch to salvation of all the nations. Yet, it is so clear that He intends to return with mercy to the Jewish people, "that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy."

Mercy. That's what Martin Luther ran out of and it defiled generations of Christians toward the Jews.

We have to be careful that we don't run out of mercy too because in America, Jews often vote for Liberal humanistic values and that doesn't set well with many a Christian-Zionist. I see it expressed in political blogs that I frequent and it really irritates even the most conservative of Republican Jews to see a 'more Zionist than thou' attitude from Christian Israel-supporters.

We also have to be careful that we don't run out of mercy in the face of persecution of Messianic Jewish believers in Israel. Not that we have un-sanctified mercy toward their persecutors, excusing or ignoring the aggressions as if they didn't exist. (Or toward the Islamist terrorists for that matter! Terrorists are terrorists.)

Rather, we must stand up and condemn persecution - even when it comes via religious Jewish zealots. We must keep the understanding before us that the apostle who wrote the lion's share of the New Covenant was a persecutor of the Jewish believers just like the anti-missionaries are today.

Spiritually, we have to join in with the Israeli Jewish believers in appealing to Heaven for God to send their persecutors a light from heaven - the same as He sent understanding to the apostle Paul so long ago. The anti-missionaries of modern Israel are EXACTLY like the anti-missionary of the Book of Acts. We are living in the days of Acts chapter 29.

Likewise, we cannot make Christians see who do not have a heart to perceive what God is doing among the Jews in our time - restoring Jewish spiritual eyes to see Yeshua and to hear the good news of His salvation. Blindness in part has befallen them. God is not a respecter of persons. Blindness in part befell Israel and now blindness in part has befallen the Church. In the end though will emerge one new man from the two in Messiah.

This is a great mystery of God to me. On one hand many of those Christians who deny the return of God's purposes to Israel in these last days, are among those portions of the Church that have had so many other truths restored - like the truth that God is still healing and delivering people today and the other miraculous gifts we see the first century believers walked in.

It is a mystery to me that many of the most ardent Christian Israel-supporters do not much believe in the spiritual gifts of the Bible still operating in our day, but they do get the revelation of the salvation of Israel. The only way I can understand this mystery is that God is going to humble both segments of Christians with the understanding at some point that neither of them has it all, and they both need each other for a more complete expression of who He is.

As the apostle Paul broke out in praise after explaining the mystery of God's blinding the Jews to Messiah in Romans 11:33: O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!

On a personal note, a couple of years ago I set out to try to discover how to address the spiritually cutting edge Church that did not understand that God is currently pouring out upon the Jews a heart to perceive Yeshua/Jesus is Messiah. I had been immersed in Messianic Judaism for two decades and felt like I needed a refresher course on how the Church generally regarded the Jews and Israel.

I'll be honest, I've had to struggle with anger and disillusionment at what I've heard. Even though I know only God can open the eyes of their hearts, it has been very hard for me to hear the statements and bear with the attitudes. It so permeates some sectors of the church and they do not even know how offensive some of the expressions are.

On the other hand, I have grown really impatient with much in the Messianic movement, like what I consider too much emphasis on the traditions that are more rabbinic than scriptural. Or, how Christians who join with the Messianic movement not being encouraged to celebrate their own identity in Yeshua rather than adopting a "Jewish lifestyle". That is not how Yeshua makes one new man in Messiah. We can learn to appreciate our Jewish roots without starting to dress like the Frum in Mea Shearim.

I think these things which are not scripturally balanced make for the pitfall of so many in Messianic Judaism falling from faith because they prefer to return to Judaism. We have to be vigilant against providing conditions that make it easy to lose our way.

Not that I am perfect, not by a long shot, but I am longing for the manifestation of the authentic one new man in Messiah. Less than that has become increasingly unsatisfying to me. So I have been living one foot in the Messianic movement and one foot in the Church that doesn't perceive that salvation of the Jews is happening right now - and it is a bona fide prophetic fulfillment of the scriptural plan of God.

What would one new man in Messiah look like?

To me it would look like Jews and Gentiles who are as different in expression as a man and a woman, a husband and wife. Not competing with each other, but complimenting each other in the life the walk together. One, but different; mutually respectful. Equal before God, but serving separate callings before Him, too. The freedom of a man to be a man and a woman to be a woman. A Messianic Jew to be a Messianic Jew and a Christian to be a Christian.

The reason I began to write this note was to encourage us, you and me, not to become bitter over those who are still blind to God's purposes in Yeshua/Jesus. We all have blind spots and mercy is clearly the antidote God intends us to use to help others overcome their blind spots.

No Weapon Formed Against You Shall Prosper

2011-03-08T09:10:00.001-08:00

There is a reason “no weapon formed against you shall prosper”. The reason is our inheritance in Yeshua gives us the delegated authority to pass judgment on the condemning words beamed at us. Weapons may form against us, but we do not have to allow the weapon to prosper against us. This is our inheritance when our righteousness is of Him and not of our own.

"Refiner's Fire," watercolor by Jana Winters Parkin, 2007

Behold, they shall surely gather together, but not by Me:
whosoever shall gather together against you shall fall for your sake.
Behold, I have created the smith that blows the coals in the fire,
and that brings forth an instrument for his work;
and I have created the waster to destroy.
No weapon that is formed against you shall prosper;
and every tongue that shall rise against you in condemnation
you shall pass judgment upon.
This is the inheritance of the servants of the LORD,
and their righteousness is of Me, says the LORD.
Isa 54:15-17

This is a remarkable passage of scripture explaining so many things that we wrestle over in our faith. Understand that it is first addressed to Israel, yet we who are grafted into the commonwealth of Israel by faith in the Messiah of Israel, also enjoy the inheritance promised by God to Israel – the servants of the Lord whose righteousness springs from the LORD.

Sunday morning as I began this article, it was at first to talk about all the things God revealed through the prophet Isaiah in these three short verses – but it quickly began to unfold as I wrote. Surprisingly, the Purim story of Esther figures into explaining this passage in spiritual warfare terms, and naturally the greater context of Isaiah 54.

In my Bible program the heading on Isaiah 54 is “A Perpetual Covenant of Peace” and verse one begins by describing the state of Israel today,

“Sing, O barren, you who have not borne! Break forth into singing, and cry aloud, you who have not labored with child! For more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married woman,' says the LORD."

The prophet is speaking of the time when God will return to Israel in salvation, or you could say, to save her from her enemies. When that takes place it will come in a way that is probably different than how we have been thinking, in that we will play a much more active role in the deliverance from enemies than we think.

“Behold, they shall surely gather together, but not by Me,” God says of that time.

Even though He says He has “created the (black)smith that blows the coals in the fire, and that brings for an instrument for his work” – a weapon formed against you – God tells His servants that those gathered together are not sent by Him, and “whoever shall gather together against you shall fall for your sake.”

That is a pretty severe warning, and the wars against Israel since her rebirth in 1948 are testimony to the fact that God is serious in this declaration. The fact is that those who have gathered against Israel have fallen for her sake – but not without Israel fighting.

We too have to fight for our deliverance from the weapons that form against us and those that gather against us. We have to fight, but even with overwhelming odds, the promise of God is that no weapon formed against us has the legal right to prosper. This is our inheritance – to fight back in His power.

In the Purim story of Esther, the evil Haman was able to get the king to make an irreversible decree against the Jews, but that did not mean this weapon could actually prosper. It could be formed, but it could not prosper. Of course, our 'inheritance' described in Isaiah 54:17 doesn't mean we are nonchalant about the weapons that form against us either.

In trying to convey truths about spiritual warfare today, and to convince us that it is part of our inheritance in Messiah/Christ that "God is in control," at times it seems we communicate too much nonchalance about the battle.

In Esther we do not see Mordecai taking a nonchalant attitude about Haman's plan to annihilate the Jews. He didn't say, 'Well, God is in control! We win. I read the back of the book.'

No rather, he did the classic Jewish grieving and despair thing, "Mordecai tore his clothes, and put on sackcloth with ashes, and went out into the midst of the city, and cried with a loud and a bitter cry." Mordecai was not going to go quietly and neither should we.

“So Esther's maids and eunuchs came and told her, and the queen was deeply distressed. Then she sent garments to clothe Mordecai and take his sackcloth away from him, but he would not accept them.“ Esther 4:4

Esther was in a good place, so good that others had to come and tell her what the state of her closest relative was. Mordecai had secured this good place for Esther which removed her from the street level view of what was happening among her people.

In Romans 9-11, the apostle Paul explains how God used laying aside Israel for a season to open salvation beyond the Jews. In the story of Esther, it is a parallel situation to the state of Christianity today which has also been secured in a “good place” that removes us from seeing the street level view of what is happening to our people, Israel.

“I say then, have they (Israel) stumbled that they should fall? Certainly not! But through their fall, to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles.” Romans 11:11

“For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?“ Romans 11:15

The Gentile Church is like Esther, situated in a good place by our ‘uncle Mordecai,’ the saved remnant of Israel, the chosen nation that has been temporarily set aside by God so salvation could be opened to all the nations, not just to Israel. So the inheritance of the servants of the Lord that Isaiah speaks of, the righteousness which Israel, and now we, walk in, is of God, not of our own righteousness.

This right here is enough to end the argument that Israel failed so God withdrew from them and bestowed salvation on a people more deserving. Do we just give lip service to the idea that none of us deserve the salvation of God? Not Israel and not the Church. Yet He has given us both the opportunity to receive His righteousness as our own.

The apostle Paul could not have laid it out more clearly in Romans that the time would come when the opportunity to receive salvation by faith in Yeshua would return to Israel, and in reality it was never fully lifted. There have been saved Jews throughout the ages since Yeshua was lifted up from the earth.

God did not replace Israel with a people more deserving of salvation, and His promise of salvation to Israel has never been withdrawn. In not understanding this simple truth – that the gifts and calling of God are without repentance – much of the Church is like Esther, who was made a queen, was situated in a palace, but became 'out of sight, out of mind' in what was happening to uncle Mordecai and her people.

Do you see this? Esther was so far removed from the realities of the rest of her spiritual family, that her servants had to come tell her that her uncle was on the street, crying bitterly in torn clothes – sack cloth and ashes.

Esther's reaction at first is a little like Marie Antoinette’s famous line when told that the people had no bread to eat, “No bread? Then let them eat cake.” So removed from the reality of the street these queens were that they could not even grasp the desperation of the situation. For Esther, the focus was, 'Mordecai is out there in torn clothes, so the answer is send him some new duds.'

I don’t want to belabor a story we all know, but only to get you thinking how much the Church is like Esther the queen, installed in the palace and insulated from the threats bearing down on her uncle and her people.

Many Christians do not regard Israel as related to them but this does not change the fact that we are grafted into Israel, we have been made the commonwealth of Israel, and that God has promised clearly to return His salvation to Israel.

Salvation is by no other name than Yeshua, so to participate in the salvation of Israel is to help bring the gospel to them. That's why 'uncle Mordecai' is among them. The saved remnant will sure be facilitated by the Esther church to bring salvation to all Israel.

"Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." Acts 4:12

It is true today, as it was when the apostle Paul wrote to the Romans (11:5) “Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace.”

Today, that remnant according to the election of grace is destined by the purposes of God to come to know the salvation by faith in the Messiah Yeshua.

"And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is My covenant to them, when I shall take away their sins. As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sakes. For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. For as in times past you have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief: Even so have these also now have not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy. For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that He might have mercy upon all." Romans 11:26-32

The Church today has the same role as Queen Esther in helping Israel by heeding the distressed cry of her closest relative Mordecai to act on the behalf of her people before the king.

Can you see that “uncle Mordecai” is the saved Remnant of believers in Israel? These are the Jews who by faith in Yeshua, like the Church seated in the inheritance of faith, are standing still in the streets in order to bring the gospel to all Israel.

Whether it is in the salvation of Israel, or in terms of our own personal, individual spiritual warfare in our lives, Queen Esther went through several stages to secure deliverance for her people.

1. She had to become aware of the distress that she herself was insulated from in the palace. She had to identify with her people even though she was personally unaffected in a good place that had been secured for her by her uncle Mordecai.

2. She had to receive the bad news that not only were her people under severe threat, but that she was in a position to intervene, though it meant sticking her neck out and possibly having it chopped off!

3. She had to make herself ready to hear from God and she did that by fasting and praying – not to change God, but to ready herself to hear His direction to her.

4. At the completion of the third day of her fast, Esther then had to act by faith on the plan she been impressed in the Spirit to take to undo an irreversible decree of her husband, the King.

These are the steps before the Church to play the part that we are called to play in the return of God’s salvation to the people of Israel.

As Mordecai warned Esther, "Do not think in your heart that you will escape in the king's palace any more than all the other Jews. For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"

In other words, the participation of the Church in the deliverance/salvation of Israel is not optional. We have a choice, but if we refuse to stick out our necks for them, we are surely going to lose our necks and God will use others who are willing.

As I wrote last week, we have two majority extremes in the Church of how to relate to Israel. One extreme is in denial about God’s faithfulness to His promises about the calling upon Israel. They have concluded wrongly that Israel is tossed overboard so a Plan B replacement can reign in Christ. The other extreme acknowledges God’s eternal covenant for the salvation of Israel, but they gravitate towards unsaved Israel and amazingly ignore the existence of saved Israel. They are trying to be as Esther to her people while flat out ignoring her closest relative, uncle Mordecai. Both are crazy positions.

But the Church that not only embraces ‘uncle Mordecai’ in the face of the Jews who believe in Jesus, and who are also moved with compassion to stick their necks out – to get out of the comfort zone of the palace of their inheritance in Christ for the sake of the salvation of Israel – these are the Esthers that God has brought forth for a time such as this.

All of these things can be understood as part of the big picture – the salvation of Messiah being released to all Israel – and also in our own individual lives as we contend with our inheritance to neutralize the weapons formed against us, as well as every word that rises to condemn us.

The weapons of spiritual warfare are not passive, we must know they exist, why we can use them effectively and then we must contend with active participation.

The Jews would not have survived Haman’s plans for them if all Esther did was fast and pray. We fast and pray to position ourselves to hear the plan from God’s own lips. Then we must move forward with confidence that our righteousness is of Him, and that the weapon-forming blacksmith and the destroyer are on God’s leash. That understanding will give us the courage to stick our necks out when He says, You are going to secure this deliverance for My people.

I hope this will help us in our personal battles, as well as to contend for the salvation of all Israel.

What does the Civil Rights, Women's Rights and Messianic Movement share in common?

2011-01-04T09:41:00.000-08:00

What does the Civil Rights, Women's Rights and Messianic Movement share in common? More than you might think.

In each instance God was restoring eroded spiritual truths and in the process the vessels He used to do this were greatly opposed by the Church. The strongholds that held Christians captive from understanding God's will for equality of Blacks and Women, is the same type of stronghold that resists what God is doing in our day to restore salvation (Yeshua) to Israel.

In 1863 President Lincoln signed an executive order called the Emancipation Proclamation but it was not until the 1960's Civil Rights movement led by Martin Luther King, Jr. that real normalcy began to break on the scene.

It was 1848 that the first women's rights convention was held in the United States, and even though women won the right to vote in 1920, it would also be the 1960's before real gender equality began to normalize in the United States.

In 1897, Theodor Herzl called the first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, toward the goal of the reestablishment of a Jewish state of Israel. European Jews would still face an near genocide in the Holocaust of the 1940's but the state of Israel would be declared at the end of that war in 1948...with much warfare accompanying it. In 1967, during the American "Jesus Movement," the first leaders of what would become the Messianic Jewish movement were saved.

This morning I woke up thinking about how recognition of the Messianic Jewish portion of the Body of Christ must be a stronghold in those refuse, because for people of faith this should be a slam dunk - it is so obvious in Scripture.

I was reminded of how many Christians refused the concept of equality for Blacks or for Women, both should have been much easier for people of faith to lay hold of the justice of equality for both of these groups, but that was not the case. It makes me reconsider the root of Christian resistance against recognizing how God is doing a new thing in our day.

As obstinate as the South was to recognize their sin of making a race of people their slaves, is this any less obstinate of the refusal of such a great many across Christendom to recognize that God is doing a unique work among the Jewish people and the nation of Israel? Is the resistance to treating our Messianic Jewish brothers as equals in the Body any less than the obstinacy that denied women their place in the world?

In each of these major movements in history - which I have pondered many times over the last three decades - the Church was an integral part of the breakthrough and it was also a major log jam damming up the free flowing stream of God-given freedom.

In the first two movements, even though Christians held key roles at various times in pressing for equality, other ungodly forces were also pressing for equality.

In the abolition of slavery, Abraham Lincoln was forced to preside over the Civil War because the good Christians of the South could not discern from scriptures that God had created all men to bear His likeness. When God raised up Martin Luther King, Jr. to lead a non-violent Civil Rights movement, ungodly forces raised up Malcolm X.

In the Women's Suffrage movement, Elizabeth Cady Staton represented the ungodly forces seeking equality for women, while Lucretia Mott - who along with Staton called for the first women's right conference in 1848 - was a Quaker preacher. A sermon delivered by Lucretia Mott in 1849, show us the hypocrisy she was confronting in the Church regarding both slavery and women's rights:

"It is time that Christians were judged more by their likeness to Christ than their notions of Christ. Were this sentiment generally admitted we should not see such tenacious adherence to what men deem the opinions and doctrines of Christ while at the same time in every day practise is exhibited anything but a likeness to Christ....Instead of engaging in the exercise of peace, justice, and mercy, how many of the professors are arrayed against him in opposition to those great principles even as were his opposers in his day. Instead of being the bold nonconformist (if I may so speak) that he was, they are adhering to old church usages, and worn-out forms and exhibiting little of a Christ like disposition and character. " *1

Today, I am convinced that the acceptance of God's active return to restore Israel to salvation and the Messianic Jewish movement He is using to facilitate that is no less a major crisis of Christian conscience that was the long and hard fight for racial and gender equality in America.

Anyone can justify anything by the scriptures. Those Christians who opposed ending slavery found a scriptural basis to oppose, but as we stand here today in the year 2011, I challenge you to find someone who chalks this up anything less than a deep deficiency in spiritual judgment.

The same goes for all those Christians who opposed allowing women to enjoy the fresh air of liberty and equality. Scriptures were found and pieced together to present plausible biblical reasons for denying women the right to vote, the right to a fair day's wages, the right to not be treated like livestock or property by their husbands.

What? Do you think good Christian men didn't treat their wives like this? Did good Christians not mistreat slaves, beat them, break up families like they were breaking up a litter of puppies? When we do not have a conscience toward God, when our hearts choose to believe in doctrines that deny the freedom and liberty of others - Blacks, Women, Messianic Jews - then our conscience becomes seared toward those groups.

I realize that some readers may be shocked and revolted that I am equating the battle for the soul of Christianity that has been waged in American history over Women's and Civil Rights to the opposition of the spiritual equality of Messianic Jews.

First the natural, then the spiritual. The opposition to recognizing the hand of God in the salvation of Israel in our day is more than a matter of doctrinal convictions. It is a stronghold upon much of Christianity, just as strong as that which gripped the hearts and minds of those who opposed integration and equal pay.

Understand this, opposition to what God is doing cannot be successfully resisted. Even as He began to set the nation right in racial and gender equality, the LORD Himself is at work in restoring the place of the "Hebrews" in their rightful and honorable place in the Body of Messiah.

Paul warned the Romans against arrogance against Israel: "For I would not, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is My covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins.

Paul warned, "But you must not brag about being grafted in to replace the branches that were broken off. You are just a branch, not the root."

People quibble over who the root is, but the main thrust of that statement is the same thing that Gamaliel told the Sanhedrin about opposing Jesus: Watch out about opposing what God is doing.

If Paul wrote that "all Israel shall be saved. As it is written," then I would say that all the Christians who say Israel is no longer of any significance are standing on extremely dangerous ground....in exactly the arrogance Paul warned us not to fall into.

If you are experiencing the conviction of the Holy Spirit after reading these things regarding your own attitudes toward Israel or toward the Jewish Body of Messiah, please pray this prayer:

Heavenly Father, I come boldly before Your Throne of grace by the blood of Jesus, not depending upon my own righteousness, but the righteous which is by faith in Your Son. Father, I do not want to be held captive by any stronghold that would blind me to what You are doing to return Israel to salvation through Your Son. I confess that I harbor a sense of superiority in my faith over the the faith of Messianic Jews. I confess that where I am not judgmental about the convictions of other Christian denominations, when it comes to Messianic Jews I have been obviously judgmental. I confess that I have rejected the validity of the convictions and faith of those Jewish believers, and also mocking of those who say God is moving to save Israel today. I do not want to be found working in opposition to Your purposes among the Jewish people or Israel, so I ask You, Father, to break any strongholds within my thought processes that put me on the wrong side of what You are doing. Reveal the roots of error and help me to eradicate every trace of religious pride that raises itself up against what You are doing to reveal the Messiah in and through Israel. Give me the grace to receive deliverance from this stronghold, and revelation to perceive Your heart in the matter. In the Name which every knee shall bow to as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Yeshua, Salvation, God with us.

1. This sermon was delivered at the Cherry Street Meeting in Philadelphia, September 30, 1849

Background: The Gates of Hell Part 2

2010-07-10T17:19:00.000-07:00

After I sent out my article, The Keys to the Kingdom & the Vast Gates of Hell Prison System, I got a call from a Messianic Jewish friend in Virginia who has a ministry to Russian Jewry. He was excited to tell me some background on the location where the exchange I wrote about took place and said it flowed perfectly into what I had written. Indeed it did.

The Gates of Hell at Caesarea Philippi

To quote myself, one of the things I said in that article was, “Now here is where many interpretations of the text go awry – because of not taking into account the original Hebrew context.”

Boy! I only knew the half of it! Yeshua did not snatch the term “gates of hell” out of thin air, but in true parabolic form gave His disciples an object lesson about the spirit realm in the very geographical location that demon spirits and false religions had claimed so many victims by sacrifice.

The time frame of this conversation was at the beginning of His preparation of the 11 for His death as the Passover Lamb that would take place in Jerusalem. He was preparing them to graduate from being His disciples to becoming His apostles. This conversation was critical to that transition, which they did not know yet would be profoundly distressing and troubling in the process of unfolding. They were on a mighty threshold of transition and didn’t even know it yet.

What exactly was Yeshua communicating to His disciples? We are not just looking at the words but at the context His disciples would have readily grasped from the location this conversation took place. When Yeshua used the term “the gates of hell” at that site notorious throughout Israel for idol worship and ritual sacrifics, it cannot be without significance.

Let’s refresh our memory of the scriptural passage from Matthew 16:13-23:

When Yeshua came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying,
"Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?"
So they said, "Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets."
He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"
Simon Peter answered and said, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."

Yeshua answered and said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah,
for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.
And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My ekklesia,
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth
will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."

Then He commanded His disciples that they should tell no one that He was Yeshua the Messiah.
From that time Yeshua began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem,
and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes,
and be killed, and be raised the third day.

Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying,
"Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!"
But He turned and said to Peter, "Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me,
for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men."

Who knew? Not me.
What else don’t we know about this?

As a Christian, there is no telling how many times I have read that passage without considering that the “gates of hell” might be an actual place with a long ignoble history. It was news to me that not only was there an actual place called the gates of hell in Israel where sacrifices to idols including human sacrifices were made , but it was also a shocker to discover this is the very location that Matthew 16:13-23 took place!

Yeshua chose to talk about the spiritual gates of hell while walking with His disciples past the location of the gates of hell on earth! Think that might be significant to what He told them in verse 19? “Whatsoever you bind on earth, will be bound in heaven and whatsoever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

Gates keep people either imprisoned in a bad place or fortressed from intruders in a good place. We can assume that the gates of hell are those gates which imprison people. So when Yeshua tells them that He is giving them the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whatever they bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever they loose on earth will be loosed in heaven, He is telling them that the gates that imprison humans in hell on earth cannot prevail against their own delegated power to bind and loose as they operate in the keys of the kingdom. We cannot just bind and loose at will, living any old way, but when we are living in the keys of the kingdom, we will find the power of heaven backing us in those things we bind and loose.

Binding and loosing is not just a spiritual declaration, it is also about forgiving. Often times, in order to release a person who is bound by the gates of hell, we have to release forgiveness to them. If we will not release our forgiveness to them, Heaven also does not release them for their trespass against us. Notice the similarity with Yeshua’s statement to his disciples in John 20:23. After first breathing the Holy Spirit onto them, Yeshas says, “Whose soever sins you remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins you retain, they are retained.”

To loose those held captive by the strong bars of the gates of hell, we have to be able to forgive or we will not have the compassion to even seek their release from captivity. It is what Yeshua did for us, and commissioned us to do for others.

Caesarea Philippi & the Gates of Hell

How do we know this is where the conversation took place? In Mark 8:27 it says, "Now Jesus and His disciples went out to the towns of Caesarea Philippi; and on the road He asked His disciples, saying to them, "Who do men say that I am?"

How do we know that Yeshua and His disciples were aware they were in the region of the gates of hell?

This vista view is taken from the vantage point of the ruins of Caesarea Philippi. Looming large over the northern part of the city is the gaping mouth of the “gates of hell” cave. There is little chance that Yeshua and his disciples walked through this region without seeing the gates of hell at the rising base of Mt. Hermon.

They had left Magdala on the western coast of the sea of Galilee(Mt 15:39) and traveled 30 miles up the road to the region of Caesarea Philippi. A Roman military road map of the period shows that the road ran from Tiberius through Caesarea Philippi then on up to Damascus in Syria.

To give you a perspective of the lay of the land, this illustration from BibleWalks.com shows the Gates of Hell (here labeled as the Grotto of Pan) on a cliff ledge of Mt. Hermon . Nearby are the ruins of Agrippa’s Palace in ancient Ceasarea Philippi.

Caesarea Philippi, the Israeli seat of Caesar worship & the worldwide seat for the worship of Pan at the Gates of Hell

What is the most important thing we can know about this region? It is that it was the seat of false religions in Israel. There was demon worship going on in this place dating as far back as the time of the Judges of Israel when the Ba’al gods were worshipped at this very site. (Judges 3:3)

Only 4 miles away in the city of Dan, the first king of Israel’s northern divided kingdom set up a golden calf as an ‘alternate’ worship site (1 Kings 12:26). The reason King Jeroboam offered a false god and false religious site was to keep his tribes from obeying the command of God to go up to Jerusalem three times a year to “appear before the LORD in the appointed Feasts (Exodus 23:17). Jeroboam was afraid if he allowed his subjects to return to Jerusalem to worship the true God at the site God had commanded them to appear, that their hearts would be turned back to the kingdom of Judah.

This is the first time in their history that Israel turned from God completely to worship false gods. It was the beginning of the end for the 10 northern tribes of the divided kingdom. It was also not the last false god to be worshiped at this site. During the time of Yeshua’s ministry in Israel, this place was dedicated to the worship of the Caesar worship and to the Greek “god” Pan.

Caesar worship was the exaltation of a government leader to be worshiped as a god, and Pan was the god of fright. Pan is where we get the word “panic” and “pandemonium.” Half-man and half-goat, Pan was known as “the god of thresholds.” It was Pan’s job to panic you when you reached a threshold in life, and at the threshold of death. If when you died Pan was not able to panic you, then your soul would cross the threshold of the cave and Hermes would take you to Hades from there!

It must have been no coincidence that Yeshua brought His inner circle of 12 here as He was beginning to prepare them for His death and to speak with them about how they would be able to deal with the spiritual warfare after He was gone; or that He was preparing Himself for His coming death in this place. That makes it difficult to believe Yeshua was not making a definite point by having this conversation in this particular place. He must have been saying something with a definite primary meaning when He told Peter and the others that the gates of hell would not prevail against the called out congregation He was building.

Now I am not excluding the broader applications of “the gates of hell” to encompass all our spiritual enemies, but the primary meaning in the context of this geographical place is clear: false religion and false gods will not prevail against Body that the LORD is raising up, that “assembly/congregation/church” that Yeshua is building.

That is exceptionally good news to those of us watching with horror as the false religion of Islam is sweeping across the world at a frightening rate of takeover and dominance by intimidation. This one word of the Lord is a word every believer can use in warfare against creeping sharia and militant Islam encroaching in our world: The gates of hell shall not prevail against Yeshua’s ekklesia! Islam will not overpower the faithful of the LORD. Nor will any other false religion prevail against His ekklesia.
Preparation for Death

In the context of preparing His disciples for His death, by initiating that conversation in this place Yeshua was also drawing attention to the contrast of the sacrificial deaths that had been performed at the mouth of the cave known as the gates of hell and His own. False gods demanded the slaughter of innocents as sacrifice, but the One True God provided His own innocent sacrifice, and as the fulfillment of the sacrificial Passover Lamb, Yeshua was about to willingly lay down His life in Jerusalem. The detour past real estate that demons have inhabited for thousands of years was surely no coincidence.

Yeshua was not only preparing His disciples for His death, was assuredly also preparing Himself. Six days later on an unidentified mountain in the upper Galilee, Yeshua would take Peter, James and John with Him to pray apart from the others. There, on what has become known as the Mount of Transfiguration, or Transformation, the glory of the Lord would radiate from Yeshua. His three disciples would be a witness to it and witness to the appearance of Moses and Elijah coming to speak to Yeshua about His coming death in Jerusalem.

There is some debate whether the “transfiguration” occurred on Mt Tabor or Mt Hermon due to an early misunderstanding of Mt 17:1 because the verse was taken to mean that Jesus took the disciples up a mountain "by itself," rather than up the mountain "by themselves." Mt Tabor is a lone standing mountain, while Mt Hermon is part of a mountain range. The latter understanding is the accurate one.

From the next mention of their location in Mt 17:22, it is clear “they abode in Galilee” and from the Mt 17:24 mention of Capernaum, it is also clear they remained in the upper Galilee, not lower Galilee where Mt Tabor is located east of Nazareth in the Jezreel Valley.

Mt Hermon is located about 1 o’clock under the word Syria. Mt. Tabor is located about 7 o’clock to the right of the word Galilee. Caesaria Phillipi where the Gates of Hell are located is under the word Mt Hermon. Capernaum is at the top of the sea of Galilee.

Clearly on foot they would not have traveled up from Magdla about 3 miles north of Tiberias on the western shore of the Galilee up to Mt. Hermon, then down to Mt. Tabor in the lower Galilee and then back up to Capernaum in uppermost part of the sea of Galilee.

These are all details that may not be interesting, but if the transfiguration took place on Mt Hermon instead of the tradition based on mistaken translation, then there is also a contrast that it appears Yeshua was deliberately making to His disciples by taking them to the seat of false religion and idolatry. Not only was this place called the gates of hell, but also Mt. Hermon was named after the false god, Hermes who conducted the souls of the dead into Hades.

It is as if Yeshua purposely walked into the high places of demonic trafficking, to demonstrate that their power and authority was inferior in every way. In the place where Hermes and Pan escort terrified souls into Hell, this is the place where Yeshua speaks of the transfer of His power and authority to His disciples so the gates of hell cannot prevail against them.

Consider this also. On Mt Hermon, Luke 9:31-32 says that “And behold, two men talked with Him, who were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of His decease which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.”

If it is the case that the mount of transfiguration was Mt Hermon, then instead of the panic of Pan, Elijah and Moses appeared in glory to talk to Yeshua about His exit from this life which was soon to be fulfilled in Jerusalem. Where Pan was said to cause panic to those crossing the threshold of death, Elijah and Moses were sent to confirm Yeshua in the powerful act of sacrifice God had sent Him to accomplish.

What must they have had to say to Yeshua about that? Fear not? Both had supernatural death experiences to share with Yeshua. Elijah was carried away in a whirlwind by the chariots of God and Moses was buried by the LORD Himself in a valley that no man knows his grave (DT 34:6).

In the place where the false god Hermes was to have carried away the souls of the dead to Hades, this was the place Yeshua chose to confront His own emotions about impending death. Instead of Pan and Hermes, Yeshua heard from Moses and Elijah, and God Himself confirmed Him from heaven before Peter, James and John saying, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!"

What a contrast!

Many people had met their death as ritual sacrifices at the mouth of the Gates of Hell cave. They were thrown down from above into the natural abyss which in those days underground water flowed from inside the cave over the ledge and into the nearby springs. If the victim thrown from above disappeared in the water, it was a sign that the god had accepted the offering, but if blood appeared in the nearby springs, the sacrifice had been rejected.

What a contrast to the sacrifice Yeshua was about to make by laying down His own life to pay the price “once and for all” of humanity’s sins. It is also interesting to note that it was said that Pan was the only Greek god that ever died and that he died the moment after Yeshua was crucified. Satan is always trying to imitate God to steal His thunder but it falls flat.

Today the Grotto of Pan is empty of the idols that once sat in the niches carved in the stone of the mountain, and the waters in the Gates of Hell cave are stagnant, not flowing.

By contrast, Yeshua could not be held by death and the gates of hell shall also not prevail against us who are the called out ones to His assembly.
Upon the rock of revelation of the identity of the Lord, Yeshua the Messiah, He said He would build an assembly of those who had been called out and all the false religions in the world of men would not be able to prevail against that Body of Believers. Yeshua said, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona” – the name that means “Hearing with acceptance” – “for flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but My Father which is in heaven.” Simon son of Jona is blessed because Father God revealed to him that Yeshua is the long awaited Messiah of Israel.

Now, Yeshua says, not only has the Father given you revelation, Simon, but now I am emphasizing to you how critical your revelation is by making a play on your name Shimon Kefa, Simon Peter, which Kefa/Peter means rock. That upon the rock of revelation from God concerning who I am, I will build my ekklesia and the gates of hell – false religions – will not prevail against it.

Yeshua did not give Peter a new name, he was called Simon Peter from the first time he fell down at Yeshua’s feet telling him to depart from him because he was a sinner (Luke 5:8). Peter was not the rock that Yeshua was going to build his ekklesia on, but revelation from God in heaven is that rock.

Shimon Kefa – hearing what God is revealing with acceptance is the rock.

"I feel sad today please LIKE me to make me happy"

2010-06-09T12:06:00.000-07:00

I keep seeing this FACEBOOK group popping up on my news feed "I feel sad today please LIKE me to make me happy" and it has been puzzling to me. Just now I clicked on it to see the FB page, but got an error message that it was unavailable. Wow. Now there's a sermon.

Being happy with ourselves cannot come from whether other people like us or not. That satisfaction is simply unavailable. Because no matter how many people "like" us, if we are only cheered from our sadness by other people liking us, we are going to be a miserable lot.

We weren't designed to draw our self-worth from other people, but from God. We can draw some measure of comfort from the people who "like" us but if we belong to God, He is a jealous God and will not allow us to be satisfied with anything less than the knowledge of His love and acceptance of us.

Tell me. Do you have people in your life who are like family to you - long-term relationships - that every time you get to feeling a little good about yourself are there to remind you how you don't live up to their expectations? How you are a disappointment, lacking in their eyes?

No matter how many people press the "like" button on your Facebook page, they are still they to remind you their vaulted opinion of you is not so high.

Hey, God bless 'em, but their opinion is not the one that counts. I am reminded of a warfare scripture - and believe me - when you are trying to draw your self-worth from the esteem of others instead of from God, it is spiritual warfare being waged over your mind, heart and soul!

2 Corinthians 10:5 says we are to wage spiritual warfare by "Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Messiah."

Let me break it down to you how this works when people close to us are the ever-present voice of discouragement about who we are as a person. It is human tendency to make the opinion of other people - our family, our friends, our associates in work or the circles we move in - more exalted than they should be. The reason is that we carry around the seed of fallen humanity that is completely insecure about ourselves as a person.

How many times have you heard an anointed minister of God admit that deep down inside they are always wondering when people in the pews are going to figure out they are not so wonderful? How many times have you heard a rock star or a movie star admit that they may get thousands of rave reviews for their performance but it is the bad reviews that stick with them and chew on their sense of worth?

That is because no matter who we are, God will not allow us to be fully satisfied with the love, appreciation, adoration or approval of fellow human beings. He is a jealous God and He will not allow us to become fully satisfied if we try to draw our sense of worth from them and not Him.

Now God did not create us to be islands, isolated from healthy human relationships. Nor did He create us as rocks, with no need for the exchange of human emotion and contact. He wants us to have all of that, but He wants us to have it in perspective so we will not be subject to the control of others in our lives, but under His control.

Here is the challenge in 2 Cor 10:5. The spiritual battle is over what we believe: Is it what God says about us, or is it what the people who are always communicating their disappointment in us? Whether they say it to our face, behind our back or just in ample disapproving looks, their opinion is not more true, important or valid than what God says. Listen right now and He will tell you: That is right!

I have been on a long journey with learning that no matter what anyone says, no matter what obstacles pop up along my life path, I can trust that what God says about me is true.

How do I know what God says about me? It is in His love letter to me beginning in Genesis and ending in Revelation. He is the consistent Voice of love, expressing to me what He thinks about me - what value I have to Him no matter what water is under the bridge and no matter how high the mountain, He has faith that I can scale it listening to Him.

If I quiet the voices of what others have said about me in my head, then I can hear Him telling me anew what He thinks about me. Sometimes that includes correction, but it never leaves me hopeless, dejected or like I am doomed.

I just wanted to say to anyone who is struggling today with anyone that conveys disappointment and disapproval of you, their opinion is flawed. Flawed because it exalts itself against the knowledge of God and against His truth about you. Don't make the opinion of one human being or 1,000 human beings more important to you than God's opinion. You are the work of HIS hands, not those who stand back shaking their heads and muttering 'tsk,tsk' under their breaths with merciless eyes fixed on you.

"Casting down imaginations" - imaginations are what people may imagine you are, but they don't see the heart as God does. So our warfare becomes not to replay their unkind or unfair disapproving comments over and over in our minds. Instead we cast those thoughts down and take them captive to the obedience of Messiah.

When we take a thought captive that means we don't let it roam freely in our minds all day. We put a rope on that sucker and kick it out of the pen our thoughts are locked up in. We are the ones that allow or disallow the thoughts roaming around in our thought life. We must take thoughts captive, making our thought life obedient to Messiah.

Every time we hang our head (or our heart) in shame at the negative vibes certain people seem to always send our way, in essence we are bowing our knee to that estimation of us. We should only bow our knee the Lord's estimation of us. Only He has the right to tell us who we are.

But do you see it? We GIVE that right to whomever we choose to listen to. If it is the crowd that loves to shame us or negate us - we are giving them the right to be the ruling voice over us.

If we are ever going to be all that we can in the Lord, we have to stop bowing our knee to those who don't have our best interests in their hearts. I'm not saying we sever all those relationships like the world teaches (severing "toxic relationships"), but I am saying that we get a Heavenly perspective and priority about it.

"Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God." We begin to wage this warfare by casting down those disapproving comments and renewing our mind with the knowledge of God."

You can be everything that God says His children can be in Messiah Yeshua. You are no exception to this rule. It is not everyone EXCEPT you. YOU are EVERYthing He says you are.

SHALOM is not just a Hebrew word "...but if it be not worthy, let your peace return to you."

2010-05-28T09:40:00.000-07:00

When Yeshua sent out His 12 hand-picked disciples on their maiden voyage of ministry there were several things involved as we see from the Matthew 10 account.

He gave them the same power He had: to cast out unclean spirits and to heal all manner of sickness and disease. (Mt 10:1)

He gave them one message to preach: "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." (Mt 10:7)

He gave them specific parameters for the ministry assignment: "Do not go into the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter a city of the Samaritans. But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." (Mt 10:6)

Jesus’ ministry on the earth in the flesh was only “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” (Mt 15:24) The day would come – after His death and resurrection – when the good news of the kingdom of God would explode into the nations. For now, Yeshua limited the twelve spiritual sons He was discipling to the same parameters of His ministry which God had set upon Him: They were only to go the nation and people of Israel.

One of the things we can draw from this can only be seen from the perspective of looking back in time. Today the common disclaimer from the Jewish people is that Jesus is a “Christian god” and that any Jew who “converts” from Judaism to faith in Yeshua as Israel’s Messiah has broken the ancient covenant of Israel with YHWH. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that God set limits on Yeshua to minister only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and that Yeshua would also place those same limits upon His own disciples while He was still in His earthly ministry.

There could be no question that before His salvation was opened to the nations after resurrection, Yeshua presented Himself only Israel. To the Jew first, and so to the Greek. (Ro 1:16)

What would have happened if Yeshua had said within Himself, "This doesn't make any sense. I know I am going to be light to all the nations, so why should I be limited to the national boundaries of Israel? Maybe I ought to travel up to minister in Damascus or over to Antioch?"

Who knows what would have happened because instead of DIS-obeying His Father's direction, He did what He saw the Father doing, and He said what He heard the Father saying.

Now Jesus was very specific to his 12 disciples about where they were to go and where they were not to go. ‘Stay in Israel,’ He told them. ‘You are not being sent to the nations but to your countrymen. You are not even being sent to the Samaritans who are close by and cousins to Israel.’ They obeyed His instructions as Yeshua had first obeyed the Father's instruction to Him.

He tells them, 'I am sending you out to announce the good news that the kingdom of heaven is drawing near. You are bringing the kingdom of heaven to Israel because I am sending you out with My gifts of power to heal and to cast out demons from the people.'

Jesus is instructing His disciples how to step out in ministry for the first time on their own, going two by two. He is asking them to trust that He has transferred His power to heal and deliver to them. They have seen Him demonstrate the power of God time after time and now is asking them to trust that, 'What you have seen Me do, you will also be able to do.' This is a big step of faith.

Now Jesus narrows the parameters even more about where and how they are to minister.
Not only is He telling them they are going out in the same power they have seen in Him, but He is really putting their trust to the test by telling them not to even prepare provisions for their trip. They are to take no money bags for expenses, no extra sandals or cloaks - just go out in the faith that as you are freely giving, you will be provided for.

Now here is the thing. Jesus was not telling the twelve that forevermore these narrow parameters would apply to their ministries. This time, however, they needed to learn that they could trust God for provision when they had no provisions.

He already knew they quickly forgot the miraculous provision in the multiplying of fish and loaves. When we forget spiritual miracles like these, it is because it did not penetrate our hearts where trust forms. We can know something intellectually, but until it springs out of our heart where spiritual understanding initiates, we cannot act in faith. Faith comes from trust built in the heart.

Eventually some of the 12 would receive instruction from the Spirit to go into the nations – not only ministering to Jews or within the borders of Israel. Whether to the foreigners in Israel, Samaria or other nations, the 11 would take the good news to all men who would receive it.
For now, their proclamation and demonstration that the kingdom of heaven was near was only towards their countrymen.

Likewise, this time they were to go out to minister without any material provisions to fall back on. In the future though they would go out with financial provisions in their belt, or an extra coat or spare pair of shoes.

We cannot make a specific formula out of the instructions Yeshua gave to His first 12 disciples because the instructions were specific to the moment. But we can draw general spiritual principles from this entire chapter about how God prepares us to minister in the power of Yeshua with the good news of the kingdom of heaven.

The issue in Matthew 10 was not just a test of their obedience to Jesus’ instruction, but it was the development of trust within their hearts that what He said about them was true: They were anointed with gifts to set at liberty the captives just like they knew He was. And as they freely gave these gifts to the men, women and children who would receive the gifts, that they would not have to worry about what they were going to eat or where they were going to sleep.

The issue was trust. We have to trust for the anointing to work through us and we have to trust that as we go about the Father's business He is our Provider. We have to trust that even though sometimes the specific instructions we receive defy “common sense” – like going out with no money to cover expenses – that it doesn’t mean we will not be provided for.

We have to be able to hear the instruction of the Spirit for the moment. God doesn’t work in neat little formulas that we can memorize and apply like some instructions on a recipe card. We can’t put God in a neat little box that says every time something is going to happen in the same way and in the same ministry formula. We must be prepared: to hear from God for the moment.

The next issue Yeshua dealt with is discernment and once again, He gave the 12 precise directions in how to discern where to stay and how long to stay there.

Jesus told the 12 when they entered into a town, to ask around and find out who was a person of merit in that town and then go stay in their house. Remember, they are in Israel and Israel has a covenant with God. When Yeshua tells them to ask around to find out who is "worthy" in this town, He is telling them to find a godly man.

He said when you enter into that person's house, embrace the household joyfully, and "If the household is worthy, let your peace come upon it. But if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you."

We don't have to wonder what that means because Romans 14:17 tells us exactly what it means: "for the kingdom of God is … righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit."

Yeshua sent the 12 out with a specific message: Come and get it! The kingdom of heaven has drawn near to you on earth and we are passing out heavenly gifts to men who will but receive!"

They are not just carrying words with them, but the power of God to heal and deliver, the power to call the righteousness, peace and joy of heaven into the earthly realm.

This "shalom" they are to bring upon the homes of worthy town elders where they stay is not about just saying something in Hebrew to the homeowner. Those who carry the gospel of the kingdom of heaven also carry the environment of heaven with them. Righteousness, peace and joy accompany those who are bringing the good news of the kingdom of heaven.

Righteousness, peace and joy from the Spirit of the Lord within us is something we are carrying everywhere we go. When we walk into a room or a home or a job if the authority of that place receives us, our "shalom" will permeate that place. If the authority of that place rejects us, then the environment of "hell" will be the thing that prevails there.

In terms of the cities of Israel in those days, Yeshua was saying that if the “worthy” town elder is indeed godly, he will receive you. But if he rejects you then he is not godly, and you withdraw from that home – whatever peace you have brought into that home cannot flourish because it is not “authorized.”

Note that if the most "worthy" person in an Israeli town was rejecting the proclamation and demonstration of the kingdom of heaven that His disciples were bringing into their homes, Yeshua is saying this is a good barometer of how unfruitful their ministry in this town was going to be. The 12 were starting off in each community at the home of the most meritorious person. If they did not receive the disciples’ message, then the twelve were to move on to the home or township that welcomed them – and the gifts from God they were freely giving away.

It is possible, when we refuse to accept that the Father is not moving in a place or among a certain group of people, that that the environment of hell will batter us into a state where all our righteousness, peace and joy has shriveled up to nearly nothing. It is important to know when to move on to where the Spirit of God can move, and this is what Yeshua was teaching His disciples.

We need to recognize that moving on is not always giving up, but it can be the witness of the Spirit to leave those entrusted to God. Don’t believe it? See how many time Jesus “departed” to another place. Who carried the environment of heaven in Himself more than Yeshua, yet when the authorities in a place began to stir up the environment of hell, Yeshua did not dig His heels in. He removed to another more fruitful place of ministry and waited for a more open season of ministry in that place.

This is not to say we should only minister in places where there is absolutely no opposition to the gospel because reality is there is no place on earth like that! Matthew 10:17 makes it clear that opposition to the gospel is guaranteed to come against us. But even when this is the case, we can discern when it is time to depart from a place or to change our locations for maximum fruitfulness.

In Israel today, we know that the more fruitful season of His ministry is blossoming in our day and still this lesson holds: it is important to discern where Israelis are open to receive, and where only hell is churning.

Even though Yeshua withdrew Himself from Jerusalem when hell was churning violently against Him, He always found a way to return to be about the Father’s business. Maybe He sent his disciples on and arrived alone unexpectedly, but He did not just place Himself in harm’s way when hell was churning against Him. So it is with Israeli ministries in this day – in some places there is more freedom and openness than others. Even though there is great opposition to Yeshua and His followers in Israel, the gospel of the kingdom of heaven is still to the Jew first. It is a Light that God will not allow to be extinguished in Israel.

Yeshua told His 12 disciples that they could discern if they were to stay and bless the townspeople, or if they were to move on shaking the very dust of the town off their sandals as they left.

Now in this, He was speaking specifically of the generation of Israel at that time because Yeshua knew the plan of God was for Israel to be set aside for a season so that salvation could be extended to all the nations. (Read Romans 9-11). He knew that for a season only a remnant of Israel would respond to the good news, but in due season and according to the plan of God “all Israel shall be saved.”

All of us – Christian and Jewish disciples of Jesus – need to be able to discern between our sometimes stubborn desire to hang in there trying to make people respond to the good news or accepting when God have us move on. None of us wants to be a quitter, but in this passage Jesus is teaching us that fruitful fields are receptive. We need to be able to trust that. It may be that we are only to withdraw for a season, or it may be a field for someone else to harvest.

The important thing is that we have discernment from God not our own stubborn spirits, and that we do not get robbed of all righteousness, peace and joy by trying to minister in an environment where hell is churning.

That can be a hard one. I would imagine that many of us have experienced trying to minister in a place where we are not received - like maybe parts of our families.

Here is the thing about that. When the good news that the kingdom of heaven with gifts of healing and deliverance from bondage has drawn near, and the authority of the house rejects it - even when it may be people we love, family members - we must DISCERN that God is NOT presently working there and move to where we discern He is working. We have to trust that He has got this. We can't force it no matter how much we may want it for someone else.

Yeshua broke it down for us in John 8 as He was speaking to those who were rejecting Him, saying, "I do nothing of myself; but as My Father hath taught Me, I speak these things. And He that sent Me is with Me: the Father has not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him." (v.28-29) As we go out to minister, we can expect the same. We can expect that we are also not left alone, but He is with us.

Bottom line: We need to discern where the Father is moving and speaking. In that place the good news of the kingdom of heaven will be welcomed and embraced. If the message is not welcomed and embraced, don't keep banging your head against the brick wall - trust God and move on to where His Spirit is moving! It takes fully trusting God to let go and move on sometimes, especially when we have strong emotional draws to the people we are trying to minister to. It is good to remember that we could never love them more than God does.

As He wrapped up His instructions and guidance to the first twelve "sent ones" Yeshua said, "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: therefore be wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." (Mt 10:16) We need to discern when to depart from a place where hell is churned up to a more fruit place of ministry. We need to discern because Hell would like to rob us by convincing us that we can never move on because it would be "giving up."

Clearly there is a verse that applies to this lie: "Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Messiah."

To get His results, we must do it His way.

Cast in a Hook & Take the Fish that Comes Up First

2010-05-19T09:25:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting on our screened back porch in the early morning reading Matthew 14 about when Yeshua came walking on the water towards His disciples' boat in the midst of a raging storm.

Suddenly, it popped into mind how I had found a job lead for my husband on Craigslist which was a most unlikely place to find business for contractors. My nephew had been searching for pick up type jobs, so that is the reason I was even looking there.

When I saw the ad for a cabinet maker wanted to contract out for a business, I was surprised but immediately copied the ad and emailed it to my husband in his office for following it up.

He did. This happened immediately after the business relationship he had been getting jobs from ended badly, through no fault of my husband.

Nevertheless this left us high and dry for a source of jobs. This economy has been rough on remodeling contractors as it has for lots of other business and trades. So this lead from Craigslist turned out to be a real God-send, a blessing of multiple ongoing contracting jobs for my husband - and for my nephew.

Back to my Back Porch

In that moment of reading Matthew 14, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly spoke within me saying, 'This was your fish with the golden coin in its mouth to meet your needs.'

That ad on Craigslist - it was like it was just there for me to find early one morning. When I returned to look at the ads in the afternoon, that ad had been removed. My husband contacted the business and it was the start of ongoing business - just in the nick of time to meet our pressing financial needs.

Many times over the years when I would read the passage in Matthew 17 of Yeshua telling Peter where to go to find the money needed to pay taxes, I have asked God, 'Where is my fish with the golden coin in its mouth?' I have mused over how that would work in my life and suddenly when I least expected an answer the Spirit was telling me, "This is that!"

How exciting to hear an answer to a question you have been asking God a long time.

Not only that, but then it dawned on me it was no coincidence that the answer came as I was reading the Matthew 14. This is the account of where Peter responded to the call of Yeshua to step out of the safety of the boat and to join Him in walking on the water in the midst of a storm on the sea of Galilee.

On the sea of Galilee in 2005 I received a similar word of the Lord, in that the Spirit spoke to me to step out of my safety 'boat' of a salaried job and to trust Him that He would keep me afloat.

There were no physical waves on the Galilee that day – instead peace was wafting off of the water like a powerful tranquilizer. I was so mellow out there on the "Jesus boat" crossing over the Galilee with the water calm as glass - but the storms and the boisterous waves were in my real life!

Just two weeks before leaving for my 2nd trip to Israel, and on Yom Kippur (the solemn "Day of Atonement" in Lev. 23), I had been laid off from a job that was a real trial for me to even stick with. I was being picked on because my superior was threatened by her superior being someone I went to Messianic synagogue with.

When the layoff came, I was devastated - by its bad timing and also by the feeling that I had been defeated by those who were determined to get rid of me there. I had tried to walk in a spirit of Messiah likeness even under withering almost daily fire. I felt I had failed to overcome evil with good.

The day after I was let go, the Lord told me to stop crying, that I was looking at it wrong: it was a promotion, not a defeat. It was His deliverance not the enemy's victory over me. So I had applied for unemployment and continued on my long planned (and un-refundable) trip to Israel.

On the Jesus boat that day crossing the Galilee I wasn't fretting about anything, just taking in the peace and tranquility that was palpable. I wasn't expecting the Lord to speak to me about my job but He did. What He said was that it was time for me leave behind the safety of a salaried job and step out on the water of following Him in my ministry for the Body in Israel.

I don't know why I am such a late bloomer in the things of God.

It was five years between that word to step out of the boat onto the water, and the word that just came about how to identify when the Lord is showing me the fish with the golden coin in its mouth to meet our needs.

We have gone through many financial struggles through the five years between my last job and today, but true to His word, He has kept us afloat. We have never gone under even though times have been tight and at times mightily uncomfortable. Financial lack can leave us feeling 'dead in the water' and abandoned. As Proverbs 14:20 notes, "The poor is hated even of his own neighbor: but the rich have many friends."

The reason I wanted to write about this is to encourage those who have been operating under similar circumstances with financial stress and strain.

Many times over the past five years I have questioned whether I just needed to go find some job and forget the spiritual experience I had on the Sea of Galilee. My husband always opposed my second guessing and doubts when they arose telling me, 'You have a job: write!' People who haven't had spiritual experiences like that would say, 'Heck yeah: do the practical thing! Get a job!'

It always comes down to which voices we are going to listen to in our lives - the human voices, the inner voices of doubt and unbelief, or the clear word of the Spirit of God we know that we know we heard.

It is our expectation - especially in western nations - that, 'If it's not quick, it's not God.' Hey, baloney to that idea! God operates under His own timetable. Shall I be full of self doubt and self hatred because the promises of God are rolling out to me slowly... but surely? Was Moses? Was Joseph? Was Paul?

Here is the conclusion of what I am saying: Hold on! The promises that the Spirit of God has spoken in your hearing and to your heart - no matter how long they take to come to pass and no matter what kind of smack downs life and people in your life may be dishing - there is a time coming that the promise spoken will begin to shoot forth in blossoming fruit in your life.

Do not give up! Do not lose heart and faint as you wait for God to arise on your behalf.

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” 1 Cor 4:16-17

Whatever the Spirit of the Lord has spoken to you in secret, no matter what anyone else thinks, He is faithful that promised. Hebrews 10:23

The Keys to the Kingdom & the vast Gates of Hell Prison system

2010-05-15T10:32:00.000-07:00

by Donna Diorio May 15, 2010

And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Messiah, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Mat 16:16-19

In Matthew and Mark the scripture says that Yeshua/Jesus went about "preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing." Then in Luke 9:2, Yeshua sent his 12 disciples out with power and authority over all devils and to heal all diseases and "He sent them to preach the gospel of the kingdom."

So what is it that Yeshua was preaching and teaching His disciples to teach?

Every verse and passage where Yeshua is teaching His disciples about "the kingdom," He is giving them in parables the "KEYS" to the kingdom. He did not reveal the meaning to everyone that came to listen to him, but Yeshua revealed the meaning to His disciples, those that were truly following Him.

Here is what He told them before sending them out to minister without Him by their side in the Luke 9:2 passage above:

And his disciples asked him, saying, What might this parable be? And He said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand. Luke 8:9-10

So the mysteries of the kingdom are contained in the parables of the kingdom which Yeshua explained to His disciples. Today, we also understand the parables of the kingdom through revelation - hearing what the Spirit speaks to enlighten us. Some see or hear the parables of the kingdom but do not understand, but His DISCIPLES can hear what the Spirit is saying and come to understand the spiritual mysteries contained in His parables.

In Matthew 16:16-19 Yeshua asked, Who do men say I am? Was He Elijah? Jeremiah? John the Baptist? Some great prophet? Yeshua was making a distinction between what onlookers vs. disciples discerned about Him.

He followed up by asking His disciples, "But whom do you say I am? Simon Peter answered, You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

To this Yeshua responded: You are blessed Shimon Barjona, because you got that revelation not through your own intellect, but by My Father speaking it to you, revealing it to you.

Now here is where many interpretations of the text go awry because of not taking into account the original Hebrew context. When Jesus calls him "Shimon Barjona" which is Simeon son of Jona, He is emphasizing the name SIMEON which means "hearing with acceptance". Shimon (Simeon) was the son of Leah and Jacob and was named Shimon because Leah said "Because the Lord has heard and given me a son."

The emphasis Yeshua is giving by calling him by his Hebrew name (Shimon) is about Peter being able to hear spiritually - hearing what the Spirit of God says and accepting it.

To further emphasize this spiritual "hearing" Yeshua says, Not only has My Father spoken this revelation to you, but now "I say also to you...." Yeshua is emphasizing that as His disciple, Peter has been given the spiritual ability to hear what the Spirit reveals.

Yeshua then switches back to the Aramic version of Peter's name saying, Not only has My Father spoken this revelation to you, but now "I say also to you that you are Peter" .

We all know that that in the Aramic "Peter" (Petra) means "a rock, cliff or ledge" and generally we have interpreted Yeshua calling him "Petra" as a sign that Peter was a rock solid man. But that name cuts two ways because it shows both the strength and the weakness of Peter.

Not only can "Petra" indicate the strength and firmness of soul, but it also metaphorically indicates a hard and unyielding soul, which we all have until and unless the Spirit of God GIVES us the ability to spiritually see and hear.

Now this goes against the flow of what we have been taught about Yeshua calling Simon Peter "Petra" but consider that immediately afterward, verse 16:23, Yeshua has to rebuke Peter for trying to correct Him from informing them about the suffering He is about to enter into at Jerusalem.

Yeshua stops Peter's faith pep rally by telling him, "Get behind me, Satan: you are an offense to Me: for you are not like-minded (froniev/G5426) in the things that be of God, but in the like-mindedness of men. Yeshua was saying, that came from human mindset, not from the mindset of Heaven!

One minute Peter was uttering a revelation from the mind of the Spirit and the next from the mindset of fallen humanity, and do you know we are all like that? None of us have arrived to the point that we don't do the same thing from time to time, but the good news is that does not disqualify us.

Yeshua is drawing attention to the fact that He is taking men who were rock solid in the ways of men, and speaking into them the mysteries of the kingdom. By spiritual revelation we hear and break out of our rocky hearts, responding to what the Spirit is revealing to us.

So Yeshua says, Not only has My Father spoken this revelation to you, but now "I say also to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my ekklesia; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

There are several things to look with new eyes at in this. Sticking with the point of our being spiritually rock hard souls until God grants us an ability to hear spiritually and to receive spiritual understanding, or revelation of what He is saying to us, Yeshua says "upon this rock I will build My called out ones."

We are called out of the crowd of hardened human souls that cannot HEAR what the Spirit is speaking to humanity. It is not based on our intellect or greatness, but it is a gift of God when we can hear anything the Spirit is saying.

I believe Yeshua is telling Peter that He is taking common, unexceptional people, without great intellectual or natural reasoning gifts, revealing the mysteries of the kingdom to them by revelation, and upon that hardened rock He is building up an assembly, a great throng of those who heard the call out of darkness into His marvelous light.

When we say we finally understand something, we say we have gotten light on a subject, or "It dawned on me."

Yeshua is saying the ones who are called out - those that gather together because they have spiritually heard and responded to what they have heard - these are My building blocks, my living stones for a living Temple of God, or My Church, if you prefer.

We call it His "Church" because that's what we've been calling it for the past nearly 2,000, but in its original context, the People of God are always His "called out" ones.

Abram heard and responded to being called out.
Moses heard and responded to being called out.
Jesus' own mother, Miriam heard and responded to being called out.

If we do not hear and do not respond, we are not called out. Upon this rock - of hearing that we are being called out by what the Spirit is speaking - is the bedrock foundation which Yeshua identifies as how His "church" will be built.

To that Yeshua adds, and upon this rock I will build my called out assembly and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

We are a called out assembly. Whether you call it His Church or His Temple - we are all called out to be assembled TOGETHER as ONE in HIM. The living building blocks of a House of God on earth, a BODY of believers hearing and responding to the Spirit of Messiah Yeshua, who is the Head of the WHOLE Body. These are the called out ones that the gates of hell cannot prevail against.

What does that mean "the gates of hell will not prevail against" the called out ones that Yeshua is building into one living Temple?

Let's start with "the gates of hell". What are they? In the Strong's definition it says that "the gates of hell" are likened to a vast prison. I like that understanding because that is exactly what the enemy does to mankind by locking us up in a vast prison system where we are bound by various sins and afflictions.

Likewise, the scriptures say that Yeshua came to set the captives free. That is what this is all about, setting at liberty those who are being held captive in the vast prison system the devil binds humanity in.

And Simon Peter answered and said, You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed are you, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood did not reveal it to you, but my Father which is in heaven.

And I say also unto you, That you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Temple; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever you will bind on earth will be bound in heaven: and whatsoever you will loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Mat 16:16-19

Upon the rock of being able to hear spiritually, Yeshua is building an assembly of called out ones - a living Temple - called out of that the vast prison system of the enemy which has bound up human beings since the Fall of Man. No longer can the enemy keep those who are called out by the Spirit of Messiah who came to set at liberty those who were held captive.

Not only does Yeshua call us out of the Gates of Hell Prison, but He also gives us the keys of the kingdom of heaven! These keys are the spiritual parables which He taught to His disciples: "The kingdom of heaven is like...."

These parables are keys to unlocking every door in the vast prison system of the Gates of Hell Prison. Every place within our souls that the enemy has lock up in bondage the parables of the kingdom are the keys to unlocking every chain that binds us.

"And I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever you will bind on earth will be bound in heaven: and whatsoever you will loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."

First, He gives us the keys of the kingdom, in parables - so those who hear and respond may be set at liberty: "And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."

Those who hear the parables and do not understand are not made free because hearing and seeing, yet we still do not understand. So, it is not based on intellect, but it is based on our hearing the revelation of the keys to the kingdom, and responding to them.

If we hear, and we follow the hearing with doing, then we will receive more. One by one, the keys to the kingdom unlock every barred gate of hell in our souls until we are free indeed.

As Romans 8:14 and 17 puts it, "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God...."

And as James said (1:22) "But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves."

We not only must be able to hear spiritually, but we must respond and do. Only then "whatsoever you will bind (asar/forbid) on earth will be bound in heaven: and whatsoever you will loose (hitir/permit) on earth will be loosed in heaven."

It is not just about what is available to us in Heaven to speak into existence in earth, but there is a correlation between our spiritually hearing the keys of the kingdom and then doing them.

Matthew 18 is a perfect example of how hearing and doing, faith and works correspond in the parables of the kingdom.

In John 20, after Yeshua had been crucified and in His first appearance to His disciples who were assembled together in fear of what might become of them, Yeshua appeared to them saying (v.21-23) ,

"Peace be unto you: as My Father has sent Me, even so send I you. Then he breathed on them, and said to them, Receive the Holy Ghost: Whose soever sins you remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins you retain, they are retained."

The words Yeshua used for remit and retain or the same words He used for binding and loosing in Matthew 16:19.

In Matthew 18 Yeshua teaches that forgiveness is a spiritual key to the kingdom - so when we do not forgive others their trespasses against us, we are retaining them in bondage in the vast prison system of the Gates of Hell prison. When we remit or forgive their trespasses against us, we are loosing them from the chains that hold them bound by the Gates of Hell.

We have been set at liberty, so we can set others at liberty.

When we violate the conditions of our being set free, the parable of Matthew 18 tells us that our own liberty can be revoked. Even though we have heard the revelation that Yeshua is the Messiah, and responded, if we want to STAY free from the chains of all manner of bondages, we must forgive. It is a major essential key to the kingdom so the Gates of Hell cannot prevail against us.

What could be more important than pressing into the teachings of Yeshua and hearing what the Spirit is saying about the mysteries of the kingdom of God in His parables of the kingdom? Only hearing and then doing.

Yeshua means God's Salvation

2010-04-19T07:26:00.000-07:00

Yoseph & Miriam took their new Son to the Temple to be circumcised on the 8th day according to the command of God. They named Him Yeshua, which means God's Salvation.

In every language the Name of Jesus is powerful, but I wish our translations had not obscured what His people called Him to His face: Yeshua - yehôshûa, God's Salvation, the Messiah. Yeshua HaMaschiah. His name is made of of two Hebrew root words - yeh-ho-vaw' GOD and yâshaʽ salvation.

To not understand Jesus first as a Hebrew boy named Yeshua, born of God to be the prophesied Messiah of Israel, is a disconnect from reality.

We are also used to the term "Christ" but it is the term AND concept of "Messiah" that is the foundation laid by all the prophets - our faith is built on the foundation of the prophets (of the Old Covenant) and the apostles (of the New Covenant).

The prophets of today may be continuing to experience non-acceptance of their role in five-fold New Testament ministry because they have failed to hear and heed what God spoke through the foundations laid by the prophets of Old about Israel. Selah.

I am not quibbling over semantics here. The concept of Messiah is necessary for Jews of all times to understand their own connection to Him who is the Messiah of Israel. Otherwise, they can go on thinking this "Jesus Christ" is just some Christian god that has nothing to do with them.

Why don't we get it? Jews cannot relate to what a "Christ" is, but they all know well what the Messiah means. They cannot relate the Christian Jesus Christ to the Messiah prophesied for Israel's salvation. The name "Yeshua" is, in fact,purposeful and He was pointedly named - Salvation. It is the same root of the name of Joshua (yehôshûa), who was a prophetic type of the Messiah to come who would lead "all Israel" into the promised Kingdom.

This article was not conceived in order wrestle over terminology or to debate who is right and who is wrong, but for the real issue at stake: the salvation of Israel that is in progress. In our Christian insistence of not recognizing God's purposes in the foundations of our faith that were laid in the prophets of Old FOR THE SAKE OF ISRAEL's SALVATION of how we refer to Him, we become a stumbling block to faith for the Jewish people.

We don't own "Christ" - the Messiah is the salvation of us all - Jew and Gentile.

Some may say, well, all these thousands of years the Jewish people have not recognized that Yeshua was the Messiah, so what difference does it make? The difference is timing. Specifically: God's timing.

The blindness of Israel to their own Messiah was according to the plan of God, this is explained by the apostle Paul - the apostle to the gentiles - in Romans 9-11. The purpose of Israel's blinding was in the plan of God to open the door of salvation to all the nations - not just to Israel.

"For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all. O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!" Romans 11:32-33

Paul is exclaiming, the human mind has a difficult time laying hold of this "judgment" or plan of God, but in His wisdom, God spoke blindness upon Israel to the Messiah IN ORDER THAT He might open up salvation to all the nations beyond Israel and including Israel again in the end.

That word in verse 32, For God hath "concluded" them all in unbelief - concluded means "to shut together" or "enclose in a common subjection" to unbelief.

Israel's unbelief was a God-thing! It was according to the plan of God from the foundation of the world because "God so loved the world." The whole world - all mankind, Israel and every other nation was always in the heart of God's Salvation. That is why Paul breaks out in praise of the "riches of both the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out."
God's plan makes no sense to the human mind, but it is spiritually perceived - but God's plan was in His Mind from the beginning. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:9

Israel did not stumble that they should fall, Paul stresses in Romans 11:11, "Certainly not! But through their fall...salvation has come to the Gentiles." Paul goes on in verse 15 to ask a rhetorical question, "For if their being cast away is the reconciling of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?"
Clearly, the Apostle to the Gentiles taught there would be an acceptance of Israel into salvation in the timing and plan of God. There are hints throughout the Hebrew scriptures of this plan, just as there are plenty of hints about what would happen in the life of Yeshua when the Messiah would be born in Israel.

In Deuteronomy 29:4 Moses called all Israel and said to them that the LORD did mighty miracles before their eyes, "Yet the LORD hath not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day."

What we understand from the Word of God is not due to our brilliance or faithfulness, it is a gift of God, lest any should boast. We cannot perceive His truth unless He gives us a "heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear."

The apostle Paul says in Romans 11:25-27 that he would not have us (Christians) ignorant of this great mystery:

"lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part has befallen Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins.

I firmly believe that self-pride is the legal cause of spiritual blindness, as Paul told the Christians in this Roman letter not to be "wise in your own self-estimation" so you would not miss the great mystery behind the partial blindness that befell Israel. Thousands in Israel DID believe that Yeshua was the Messiah and what they possessed was a humility instead of pride that allowed them to perceive the Truth.

But where does that leave us today as so much of what I call the "cutting edge Church," those that are operating in the gifts of the Holy Spirit? Indeed,the very prophetic portion of the Church that are possessing and teaching of our inheritance in Him, are also GUILTY of having NO VISION for the plan of God that is being revealed in the current harvest underway of "all Israel" just as the apostle Paul predicted?

Are the Jews really more faithless people than all the non-Jewish nations? Is this really what we Christians think, that we are so much better than Israel in the natural that we can believe what they could not believe just because of spiritual superiority?

If so, we need to get over ourselves and just read what the Word has to say about all that. Otherwise, we show ourselves full of unbelief because the Word of God clearly spells out that God blinded the spiritual eyes and ears of Israel FOR HIS PURPOSES to widen the net of salvation beyond Israel to all the nations.

Isaiah 6: 9-10 is a prophetic proclamation spoken over Israel specifically regarding their coming spiritual blindness to the Messiah. "And He said, “Go, and tell this people:

‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’
“Make the heart of this people dull,
And their ears heavy,
And shut their eyes;
Lest they see with their eyes,
And hear with their ears,
And understand with their heart,
And return and be healed.”

Why would God put a blindness on the people of Israel "lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their eats, and understand with their heart, and return and be healed?" So that God could "conclude" them all in unbelief and widen His Salvation to all the nations of the world - including Israel.

God did not (and does not) hate and repudiate Israel, the spiritual blindness was for a season. He had (as has) every intention of removing the scales of blindness in His own timing and for His own stated purposes to turn away all ungodliness from Jacob.

At the end of the age, the spiritual scales of blindness like those that were upon the eyes of the apostle Paul, are being removed, and Israel will increasingly be able to see that the Messiah of Israel has come in the form of the Son of man, Yeshua, perfectly fulfilling the the prophecies of Israel's Messiah.

This is why we Christians need to lighten up and realize that Israel has paid a price too - FOR OUR SAKES - in the big picture of God's plan of salvation for man.

Is it such a big obstacle to us to embrace that a Jewish child was born of a Jewish virgin. She named Yeshua according to His destiny to be God's Salvation - the Messiah, not only of Israel but for all the nations?

Can we Christians put our feelings of insecurity aside about "the Chosen People" and look upon those fields and spiritually perceive the fields are white unto harvest?

Healing for the Holocaust

2010-04-12T09:43:00.000-07:00

The healing for the pasts of every single one of us is only in Yeshua. I do not say this to minimize this day of remembrance of the devastation of the Holocaust, but to point us all to our sole hope of healing from the devastation and emotional wounds of our pasts.

I have never liked it how others have borrowed the term "holocaust" for their causes. It trivializes the true horrific attempted genocide that took place in the big middle of the European "Bible belt." Every cause that chooses the term "holocaust" to apply to their cause, diminishes what was done to the Jewish people - not in the backwoods of a third world nation, but in a modern Western "civilized" country. Not by personal choices made by individuals, but a collective, organized attempt to annihilate a people from the face of the earth. Comparisons to slavery and abortion are not on the same level as what took place in the Holocaust.

There must be a special memorial for Holocaust, but our memory of the attempted genocide of a whole people is not enough to keep it from happening again. The saying, "Never again!" is understandable, but keeping the memory alive is not enough to stop the powers of hell from inciting another run at the Jewish people. Israel is the center point of the fulfillment of God's plan in the salvation of mankind and that is the target that is on the back of the Jews.

Nor is there ever healing available in the memory of the Holocaust. We must never forget such evil but the healing of every devastation in each of our personal lives, as well as in the lives of the Jewish people, is only to be found in Yeshua.

Isaiah 53:3-5 says of Israel's Messiah,

He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrow, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

Throughout the scriptures - from the Hebrew through the New Covenant - there is an idea expressed that not many of us like very much and that is the concept of "the fellowship of His suffering." This fellowship of His suffering is not only the role of those of us Christians or Messianic Jews who have taken up His cross, but the nation of Israel, too, has played a role in the fellowship of His sufferings.

The first example that comes to my mind is the scapegoat of Leviticus 16. There were actually two goats in that prophetic picture - one upon whom the sins of Israel were laid as a sacrifice to the LORD for sins, and the other goat, according to verse 10,

"But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the LORD,TO MAKE AN ATONEMENT WITH HIM, and TO LET HIM GO FOR A SCAPEGOAT IN THE WILDERNESS."

Surely this is exactly as the prophetic picture painted, Yeshua was sacrificed as the Passover Lamb for the sins of the world, and the Israel - the Jewish people - were sent out into exile (the wilderness) as a scapegoat "to make an atonement with Him."

I know this may be controversial, but the picture holds perfectly true to the explanation in Romans 9-11 given by the apostle Paul for the part Israel was playing in opening salvation to the Gentiles.

11:7 and 11 "Israel has not obtained that which he seeks for; but the (Jewish) election has obtained it, and the rest (of Israel) were blinded ....I say then, Have they all (Israel) stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles..."

Paul explains that the setting aside of Israel was not a complete rejection and repudiation, but a setting aside for a season in order to accomplish God's purpose of widening salvation beyond Israel to the whole world.

It is the plan of God - explained repeatedly in prophetic pictures throughout the Hebrew scriptures and explained most fully by the apostle Paul where he also said that a time would come when Israel would no longer be locked up in unbelief and "all Israel shall be saved, as it is written" - Romans 11:26.

11:32-33 For God hath concluded ("to shut together") them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all. O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!

11:15 For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?

In the beginning of this note I spoke to the only healing that is able to truly heal a devastation as great as the Holocaust, and it is Yeshua. Until, as Isaiah 53:10 says, Israel "shall make His soul an offering for sin" there can be no true healing from the national trauma of the Holocaust. There can be memory and the repercussions of being a scapegoat in the wilderness, but only the full revelation of the Father's love through the embrace of Israel's Messiah can wholeness come for the wounds of the Holocaust..

Some of us have experienced considerable trauma and personal devastation in our lives. The only healing that is capable of restoring our wounds to the state of original purity and integrity is the healing that is available to us in the salvation of Yeshua. For salvation is not only a ticket to heaven or an occasional answer to our prayers but it is God's provision for our full restoration, for healing to the uttermost. It is not the light work of the Holy Spirit that many of us have been settling for, not merely being "patched up" but being fully restored "to original purity or integrity."

Who would not rather have complete wholeness rather than just being patched up? It is part of the price that was paid by Israel's Messiah, Yeshua. He who was pictured as a goat upon whom all the sins of the nation were laid. This inheritance of healing is not only for our individual personal salvation, but it is for the national salvation of Israel that has already begun.

Some people will not like that I have identified Israel as the scapegoat sent out into the wilderness, but what was exile from their nation for almost 2,000 years if not being scapegoated in the wilderness? Now we do not yet see "all Israel saved" but who among us that knows the faithfulness of God would believe that God has given the nation of Israel a re-birth - a one of a kind event among all the nations that ever lived and died - if He did not also intend to give Israel a spiritual re-birth?

Is the "fellowship of His sufferings" so difficult to see in the nation of Israel?

When Yeshua was carrying His cross to the place where He would be crucified, He had already borne great affliction, smiting, bruising, chastisement predicted in Isaiah 53. His tormentors "compelled" a bystander in the crowd, a man named Simon from Africa, to help Yeshua carry the cross to Golgotha.

While we human beings often bear the wounds and suffering from living in a fallen world - sometimes devastation to our emotional souls, the good news is that Yeshua is able to fully heal and restore each of those places in our hearts.

The catch is we have to give up those wounds. We can't keep our wounds alive for ourselves, nursing our damaged feelings about the hurt and pain we have just barely endured. To be healed, we have to be willing to give our wounds up. It sounds like a no-brainer, but we often define ourselves by the devastations of our lives. We have to forgive and we have to stop see ourselves through the prism of the pain and suffering.

The only way we can do this is in recognizing that full healing is included in our inheritance of Yeshua's salvation, and by giving Him our wound so He can do for us what no other power or intellect on earth can do: restore us to wholeness.

For Israel, there is a day on God's horizon where all Israel shall be saved. The tears of the Holocaust will be washed from every eye. The hundreds upon hundreds of years of rejection and wounding as the scapegoat wandering in the wilderness will be healed - fully restored to original purity and integrity of the nation before God. It is the promise God made to Abram come full circle.

When Abram first left Ur of the Chaldees, he went out with his father, Terah. Abram's brother Haran, had died before Terah took Abram, Sarai and Haran's son Lot to go to the land of Canaan. Some say that it was Terah that God first sent to the Promised Land instead of his son Abram. I don't know about that but for certain God chose a family line and spoke to Abram's father to leave Ur to the distant land of Canaan.

Terah started the journey but he did not finish it. He only got as far as the city of Haran - the city that had the same name as his beloved dead son. There Terah stayed where he eventually died.

It may be that the memories of his lost son overwhelmed Terah. Haran means "mountaineer" and in prophetic terms mountains are often the obstacles we must overcome to go on with God. Terah was not able to overcome the mountain of Haran, so he stopped on the journey God called him to take and could not go any further.

When we do not give every wound and devastation of our lives to the Lord to heal, we get stopped in our journey too. Abram went on with the calling of God. He did not stay camped out at the memory of the loss in his family, but left his father's house in Haran and continued on the unknown path of God's leading.

We have to do this too. We have to leave behind the place where other members of our family may be camped out mourning the losses of our family line. We have to be willing to go forth in the calling of God to the place of promise where everything God has spoken to us for the future of our families and blessing to be fulfilled.

I would never suggest that Messianic Jews should not remember the Holocaust. It is an important identification with Am Israel. But the future and blessing of Israel lies in the healing - the full restoration of original purity and integrity - that is only available through Yeshua. I would suggest to us all that we each personally lay hold of this part of our inheritance in Him, for the sake of all our families and for their future salvation. If they see us take hold of this measure of healing, we will indeed be a bright light set upon a hill.

The most important identification we can make in our lives is our identification in Him. In my family line there are many identifications I have made from the suffering, wounds, rejection and poverty I can clearly see that have come down to me from the generations before me. I would be the greatest fool of all not trade all of those identifications for my identification in the the Messiah of Israel, by whose stripes I am healed.

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Who will define reality in our lives and in our nations?

2009-11-10T14:30:00.000-08:00

by Donna Diorio

A truth from Frangipane's The Three Battlegrounds is about the battle being waged in our thoughts.

The battle is for predominance to establish a reality over our lives. It is a tug-of-war over hearts and minds to establish either God's reality or the enemy's.

This same battle is being waged in the media to establish the reality over our nations. The dominant message will shape the thinking of the public, and establishes its vision for the future. We must fight for truth to prevail.

I am seeing this clearly in the current media coverage in the U.S. as a majority of the news media are desperately trying to avoid the conclusion that Palestinian-American soldier/psychiatrist was motivated by radical Islamist thinking. The majority of the Liberal media would rather entertain anything BUT the obvious evidence that Hasan repeatedly expressed jihadist doctrine to fellow soldiers (patients) and his colleagues treating them for PTSD.

In Israel we are seeing the same kind of reluctance to acknowledge the radicalized religious-nationalist thinking that motivated a West Bank Settler to commit murders of several Arabs, attempted murders of a Messianic youth and a Peace Now Leftist professor, and even murder and attempted murder of on duty Israeli police. Each one of those diverse types of Israelis are regarded as the enemy of the religious-nationalist activists' aspirations. Whoever does not accept their doctrine is an enemy of their vision for Israel.

It reminds me of the mantra we have heard since 9/11 in the U.S. that "Islam is the religion of peace." Yes, but in radical Islamist doctrine your only hope for peace is in accepting that Islam is destined to dominate. No matter if we are Christian, Jew or Muslim, if our doctrine does not allow for all others to choose their own religious belief, if we cannot co-exist with "the other" but justify whatever is done to the infidel, then we have become radicalized. Terrorism is not far from translating from thought to act.

If Christians would recognize their true relationship ties to the indigenous Body in Israel instead of making connections with traditional religious-nationalists we would not have such a sticky problem on our hands.

It is touchy ground, I know. God gave Israel a lot more land territory than is currently possessed, but there is something incredibly ungodly about trying to cover over, excuse or ignore the type of vigilante law that many of the settler activists hold to. I am not condemning ALL settlers, but those who are in denial of the dangerous radicalism of some settler activists are not doing themselves any favors.

It is the same as a U.S. media, government and military that is in such denial - and so eager not to be Islamaphobic - as to ignore the clear facts. When that happens, the authorities fail to shut down our vulnerability to their violence. It will happen again. If we are not willing to honestly face the facts, then we are doomed to see repeats of carnage.

It used to be that reporters lived by the creed of following the facts wherever the facts might lead. Their search was for the truth. That has been replaced by a search for only the facts that lend support to the agenda. News journalism is now an ideology driven profession.

I hear a spiritual principle repeated often that whatever is the reality in Israel, it is a sign of the coming reality in the nations. If this is so, then watch carefully how Israel media and law enforcement deal with the facts in the Jacob Teitel case.

UNREPORTED FACT: There were others involved in scouting the Ortiz residence before the bombing, and also in placing the bomb-laden package. The lone wolf theory of the crime does not hold up to the evidence in video security tapes.

It may be yet unclear how many were involved in the conspiracy to murder at the Ortiz family home, but it is clear that there is a dangerously radical mind set, or doctrine, among some religious-nationalist activists. This mindset breeds murderous acts.

Last year, even prominent Christians and government leaders hobnobbed with these activists, not discerning or understanding the underlying radical doctrines of many of them. Many Christians are even funding the activities of these groups, even raising money for more illegal outposts to be built in utter disregard for the democratically elected rule of the Israeli government.

Once again, I understand this is a sticky area of controversy, but I am mightily uncomfortable with Christian and government leaders like Mike Huckabee spending most of his time in Israel visiting settlements and with Yeshiva Ateret Hacohanim's Jewish Reclamation Project picking up his trip tab.

Too many Christian leaders in government and out, do not really know the facts about the religious-nationalist groups wooing them, and whom they support. Indeed, many of them do not WANT to know the facts and have repeatedly ignored those who tried to educate them in the facts. Some have even accused and attacked those saved Jews who tried to tell them the truth of being "jealous" or other nonsense.

The word "disabuse" means "to free (a person) from deception or error." To dis-abuse. To reverse the abuse that is being perpetuated (by a deceiver) on someone bringing them into error or deception. To dis-abuse is also to halt the cycle of abuse that such error and deception puts into motion against others.

In the U.S. we are seeking to "disabuse" those who seek to ignore the links of radical Islamist doctrines to acts of terrorism.

In Israel we are seeking to "disabuse" those who seek to ignore the links between radical religious-nationalist doctrines to acts of terrorism committed against a wide array of "others" in Israel.

In one of the newspaper articles I read about the Teitel arrest, in which a reporter was asking why it took the police and Shin Bet a dozen years to catch him, the reporter said that one of the reasons it took so long was because his targeted victims were so diverse - Palestinians, a messianic Jewish family, a Leftist professor, homosexuals, a few policemen. So many different types of people were hated and targeted that it seemed like many perpetrators instead of one.

Indeed, it may still have been many perpetrators, but all out of the same pool of activists. Teitel could easily have claimed sole responsibility for many attacks he participated in with others. By claiming all, he "martyrs" himself to the cause allowing others the freedom to continue in their vision.

The truth is, the diversity of targets makes perfect sense if one is willing to look for potential suspects in the religious-nationalist activists camp for potential conspiracies and/or lone wolf attackers. It is the same thing in the U.S. where everyone has been brow beaten since 9/11 by CAIR, the Council of American Islamic Relations into avoiding any hint of "Islamophobia" or profiling on the basis of Islamist indoctrination.

And that is our choice. We can ignore where the facts lead us and we can guarantee that we will remain vulnerable to more and greater attacks. Face the truth or deny it.

To face the truth does not mean we crank up hatred for Muslims in the United States or religious-nationalist settlers in Israel.

Ami, David and Leah Ortiz provide a sterling example of the heart of God to live out the Sermon on the Mount in spirit and truth. They grant forgiveness to those who harmed them and mercy to their families. They are praying for and trusting God for the salvation and deliverance of their neighbors in the settlements - both Arab and Jew.

Facing the truth does not mean turning on hatred toward anyone. Our battle is for the truth and part of our warfare is to be able to express the sincere love of the Lord for others even though we know and have faced the truth about them.

The quote from Frances Frangipane I was referring to in the opening is this: "The essence of spiritual warfare is in whom shall define reality: the Word of God or the illusion of this present age."

That is the warfare we are waging not only in the spiritual realm of prayer, but also in the natural realm of speaking the truth in love in the public square.

It is often out of our comfort zone, but if we are not adding "salt" into the world around us, what good are we? Prayers have wings, but faith has feet.

We have to get involved in the battle like they did when the walls of Jerusalem were being rebuilt - a hammer in one hand and a spear in the other. We need to rebuild the walls of protection around our nations facing the truth and remaining true to God's love.

Permission granted to forward or republish this writing providing
author’s name and www.israelprayer.com are included.

How to start an Israel Prayer group

2009-09-09T07:58:00.000-07:00

Someone from South Africa just emailed me asking for pointers in how to start an Israel Prayer Group. In responding to a question that several have asked about in the last year - and I wish even more would consider - I thought it would be a good topic to share here.

Israel Prayer has been the most faith building prayer group I have ever been associated with.

An annual picnic gathering of Jewish and Palestinian believers in Yeshua in northern Israel - building the bonds of brotherly love.

How to start an Israel Prayer group.

The short version is: Wherever two or three are gathered together in the Name of Yeshua, there He is in the midst!

Israel Prayer groups do not have to have large numbers to make a difference. Anyone with a heart stirred by God to come into agreement with Him over the laborers in His harvest fields (that are white unto harvest) in Israel can do mighty things in the Spirit with the prayer of agreement.

In fact, I have found in 8 years of praying specifically for the Body of believers in Israel that many fewer of God's people understand they are precisely where His priorities really lie in the Land of Israel. As the prophetic proverb goes, "Despise not the day of small beginnings!" We are a type of Gideon's Army sent to prepare the way for a strategic arena of battle: the salvation of "all Israel".

My first Israel prayer team in 2001 started with only five women in a Messianic congregation in Dallas, but we saw mighty things take place. In fact, Israel Prayer has been the most faith building prayer group I have ever been associated with because we actually hear back dynamic answers to prayer - sometimes in just a matter of days or weeks.

Our first year of praying for the Israeli ministries was during a very turbulent period for Israel and the world. We began only a couple of weeks before September 11, 2001. In the aftermath of that horrific Islamist attack on the United States, Israel saw that it was time to move into the Palestinian-held territories to do a 'house cleaning' of bomb factories and other terrorists nests. Israel had been suffering a long and steady string of terrorist bombings against their citizens and it was the perfect time to clean house without reaping massive worldwide condemnation for doing so.

During the Israeli operation, our Israel Prayer team began to get regular reports from a Jewish ministry in Ariel with deep ties to Christian Arabs in the Palestinian territories, David and Leah Ortiz. Many Arab Christians had been arrested by the Palestinians; they were being tortured and some murdered in Palestinian Authority jails.

We were praying for their release as town-by-town the Israelis went in to clear out terrorist nests in the Spring 2002 Operation Defensive Shield. As they did, the IDF also freed what they called "prisoners of conscience" - the Palestinian Arab Christian brothers being held in prison. All the way to the last town, Arab Christians were being freed by the Israeli Defense Forces and we were praying for them all the way. It was so encouraging to our faith to see how God worked in concert with our prayers, and also to see the compassion of Jewish ministries for their Christian Arab brothers.

The next year during my first visit to Israel in 2003, three of us from the Israel Prayer group spontaneously decided one afternoon to visit the Dugit Messianic outreach in Tel Aviv. Inside it "just so happened" that one of the Palestinian Christian men we had been praying for during Operation Defensive Shield was there just hanging out. He was the last man in the last town that the IDF liberated from PA jail because of his Christian faith. The Ortiz prayer requests continually mentioned the plight of "S" and also how much he blessed God and the IDF for rescuing him from his persecutors. In the Dugit shop as "S" shared his testimony with us, we thought: "hmmmm....this sounds really familiar!' Upon return to the U.S. we were able to confirm "S" was the person we had prayed for in 2002. It was a mighty confirmation to us from God that we were on His track in praying for the indigenous believers in Israel.

During the same first year of Israel Prayer we got report after report of Israeli believers who were spared from becoming victims in terror bomb attacks. One young teen got a blinding headache that drove him off his bus one block before the suicide bomber detonated. Several other of the ministry leaders were among the first on the scene of bombings because they were within yards of where the bombers detonated themselves. We saw the mighty hand of God sovereignly protecting the believers.

In all these dramatic things, the Holy Spirit made this point with us: He has a destiny and a Divine Commission on these humble, obscure servants of His laboring among their countrymen in Israel. The Lord bade us to recognize their importance in His eyes to the ultimate salvation of Israel. We were not to dismiss them as a minor determinant or force in what happens to Israel.

As we have gotten to know them as people - through their prayer requests and reports - we have discovered that these are dedicated men and women serving the visions of the Lord for their people and nation. So it is no less encouraging to hear of the wonders God is doing in the ministries, providing needed resources for outreach, giving favor with officials, touching the lives of Israeli Jews and Arabs who have no answers for their lives...but the Lord Yeshua.

It is such a blessing to stand with those brothers and sisters who are doing the work of the Lord in Israel. International politics is one thing, but it is not everything and certainly not even the most important thing. The Lord's heart is for the salvation of Jews and Arabs more than anything else. If the people are saved, will the Lord not arise for the land they live on? One thing most Israel-supporting ministries overlook is the connection to the 10 to 15,000 believers in the Land of Israel. How can God's will for Israel ever be established without making this connection?

So, the first priority in setting up an Israel Prayer Team is to connect with the prayer requests of the Israeli ministries. Each week I send a compilation of prayer requests out - Arrows from Zion are the prayer points in brief, and these are sent with an attachment Weekly Summary of Prayer Requests from Israeli Ministries. The attachment in pdf and word document form, are the actual excerpts from prayer letters that I have received over the previous week from Israeli ministries. We give excerpts to introduce our subscribers to Israeli ministries they do not know and we include contact information for each ministry so subscribers can make direct contact with those they are most drawn to. The Weekly Summary also often include photos which I find helps us to bond more with those we are praying for.

The information given in emailed Israel Prayer Summaries can compromise the safety of the believers if they fall into the wrong hands. The Israeli believers come under much persecution by those who oppose the gospel in Israel. That is why I vet the requests to be on my mailing list and don't post the Weekly Summaries online - just the Arrows from Zion prayer points.

Most Christians are unaware that Jewish believers are being persecuted in Israel. Because traditional religious Jews are generally very gracious to Christians, we often have a hard time accepting they could so despise the Jews who believe Jesus is Israel's Messiah.

There is a lot of denial in the Israel-supporting Christian community on this count and though they mean well, it is a situation that exacerbates the troubles of Jewish believers in Israel. As Christians become aware of their brothers and sisters in Israel, this denial begins to dissolve. We Christians can face the truth about religious persecution of Jewish believers in Jesus without it turning into hatred, but we must face the truth that many of those we have been supporting in Israel are actively opposed to Jewish believers in Yeshua as Messiah.

This reality is something that I need the people who receive this weekly prayer letter to understand and hold as a serious trust not to share the letter with any unbelieving Jews - never, ever. I hope you understand and see the necessity for caution because we want to be a blessing to the Body of Messiah in Israel, so we must be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.

If you are interested in starting an Israel Prayer group I would encourage you to either sign up for the weekly mailing of prayer summaries from Israel by emailing me at donna@israelprayer.com or access the Arrows from Zion prayer points on my blog at Israel Prayer Dot Com.

You will be blessed as you pray with the very heart of God for the ministries and believers in Israel.

Integrity of Our Words

2009-08-19T09:06:00.000-07:00

"Catch the foxes for us. The little foxes that are ruining the vineyards, while our vineyards are in blossom." Song of Songs 2:15

This morning as I began to do my morning surf for what is happening in the news, I was struck by several stories on the Jerusalem Post talking about a Swedish reporter who has reported that IDF soldiers are kidnapping Palestinians in order to sell their organs.

One of the Israeli headlines is Israel aghast at Swedish report on IDF.

For someone who has routinely witnessed outrageous lies against Israel reported in the Palestinian press - everything from Israel putting sex arousal drugs into Palestinian water to purposefully infecting the Palestinian population to HIV - I thought this kind of lying was confined to the realm of third world sophistry. Who would believe a European newspaper would allow such tripe to be printed as factual or that the Swedish government would not immediately move to denounce it as the foolish racist propaganda it is?

Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee has been touring Israel and I haven't been exactly comfortable with the kind of things he is saying in Israel. It is one thing to be strongly supportive of Israel, it is another to issue statements that sound like they came from the fartherest zones of Israel's far right. Several of the quotes from Huckabee being circulated are, as they say in international diplomatic circles, "not helpful."

Take the one reported in an Israeli newspaper under the title of , Huckabee: 2-state solution 'unrealistic'. Huckabee reprtedly said that there is no room for a Palestinian state "in the middle of the Jewish homeland." Does he not realize that statements like these from U.S. political figures have deep ripple-effects in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? As a political figure, Huckabee should measure his words more carefully and he can do that without being compromised on the truth.

"The politician, a Southern Baptist preacher" also "praised Israel for giving Muslims access to Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock - also the site of the ancient Jewish temples - even thought the presence of a mosque there 'could be considered an affront," the Jerusalem Post reported.

Huckabee is performing like a bull in a china shop with these kinds of political statements. It may please his handlers in Israel (Irving Moskowitz), but these kinds of comments are not good for the already volatile standoff. Temperance, Huckabee.

What's worse is yesterday I received a report from a Christian Zionist organization in Jerusalem that took Huckabee's Dome of the Rock statement and repackaged it to sound even worse: their headline was that Huckabee said outright that the Dome of the Rock was "an affront."

Please, folks! Step back from the taamula, take a deep breath and get a little godly perspective on this. What is the point in ratcheting up an already offensive statement to millions of Muslims? Why misrepresent Huckabee's actual words and meaning? Do you think the Israeli government really wants to deal with Palestinians who have given up completely on negotiations? Speak the truth not exaggerations.

This lack of integrity is showing all around us. We have a president who made all sorts of promises about representing all the people of the United States and then once elected, began steamrolling a far left agenda through without any regard for his promises to the people of the United States. Lying to get in the position to do what you want seems to be the accepted M.O., but not only for the president. It is a plague throughout our society, even accepted in many Christian political circles.

Throughout the election campaign we saw lies, exaggerations and slander flying at record levels - and Christians participated in the melee seemingly without conscience. That really worries me. Are our consciences so seered that we are no longer able to speak with integrity? If that is the case, then our saltiness in society has lost its savor, and we cannot expect the Lord to fight for us.

The integrity of our words is important to the Lord - more important than our being able to prevail in any 'war of words'. We might win little battles by stretching the truth or outright lying, but we will lose the ultimate war if we don't play by God's rules. Integrity speaks the truth without misrepresentation.

This has been on my mind for days because daily we see so much exaggeration, misrepresentation and slander from all quarters - including from people of our faith. If we cannot have the integrity to speak the truth without bearing false witness, then we lack integrity.

1 Corinthians 9:24-26 says that as people of faith, we are running in a race to receive a prize and that every one of us is fervently endeavoring for "the mastery" of this race we are running - not for a crown that perishes, but for one that is immortal. Therefore, we are to run not without certainty (without a moral compass) - as if we are shadow boxing, wasting our energies not hitting anything spiritually solid.

We waste our energies when our words lack integrity. If we have become so embroiled in an issue that we no longer question what the real truth is, then we have been way-laid by the enemy and are no longer serving the purposes of the Lord to be salt and light in our spheres of influence.

We should not kid ourselves into believing anything different.

Today is my birthday. If I was Jewish, my Bat Mitzvah portions would have occurred on the Sabbath before the 9th of Av

2009-08-07T09:26:00.000-07:00

I wouldn't have known that if one of the elders at the Messianic congregation hadn't researched our Bar and Bat Mitzvah portions to give us a few years ago.

Baruch HaShem, Dallas

No offense, but I have not be drawn to Messianic Judaism in that way. I am not the least motivated to learn Hebrew so I could read from the Torah in the Shabbat service. In my nearly two decades in the Messianic community I haven't been trying to redefine my Christian identity into a "Messianic Gentile" identity. It seemed to me to defeat the very goal of the LORD to make of two one new man in Messiah.

No more than my marriage union with my husband has eliminated my distinct identity as a woman, my coming alongside the Messianic Jewish believers has not erased my identity as a Christian. Neither of us has anything to be ashamed of, nor to feel inferior to, in our distinct, yet unified identities in Yeshua/Jesus. It isn't a competition, it's a family. I believe our distinctive callings are to be celebrated, not argued over which now holds the dominant role. (An argument that misses the point of "one new man" entirely.)

Anyway, back to "My Jewish Birthday" - If I had been born a Jew, then on Friday, July 26th, 1963, I would have had my Bat Mitzvah Sabbath. I would have celebrated my 13th birthday by "making aliyah" (going up) to read the Torah. My portion, Davarim ("Words" or Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22) would have been read on "the Sabbath of Vision," (taken from the haftarah portion, Isaiah 1:1-27) because my Jewish birthday falls the Sabbath before Tisha B'av, a day of mourning for the destruction of the first and second Temple.

Okay - that's it! No more bogging down in all the technical intricacies! Here are the things I'm getting at:

First off, I wasn't too crazy about finding out my Torah portion was tied to Tisha B'av. It is not the most uplifting portions one could have linked to their life, although I have to admit - at the time I would have been having my Bat Mitzvah devastating events in my family life were unfolding that would impact our family for decades and generations. So when I received the little index card telling me what my Bat Mitzvah Torah portions were, I thought, "Well isn't this just par for the course!"

Both the passage from Deuteronomy and from Isaiah speak to the rebellion of Israel and God responding with what He intended to do about it. Like I said, not the most uplifting passages...but also not unlike my own life. Perhaps that is why I have always related so personally to the things I've read in Scripture about Israel. Sure, there is all this disobedience, rebellion, failure, but also the promise of God's love toward Israel shines through all that in the end. It always gave me so much hope seeing how His intentions even through all that was for good in Israel's end.

As that great prophet of light-heartedness, Jeremiah put it: "For thus says the LORD....I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope."

Rembrant: Prodigal Son

Through all the "rocky road" relationship, Israel has always belonged to God and in the end still holds a pearl of great price: the promise of God to give Israel at last the ability that "they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed." Isaiah 6:10

What I'm saying is, I can relate to the troubles of Israel and also draw great hope for His plan for me in the end - a future and a hope.

Secondly, in doing some investigation into my Bat Mitzvah Torah portion this year, I found many interesting, timely points. One, in the portion from Isaiah, God is telling Israel that He is not interested in sacrifices of animals or solemn assemblies. What He is after is people who are righteous and genuinely holy - not merely religiously pious.

"Even though you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean;
Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil,
Learn to do good;
Seek justice,Rebuke the oppressor;
Defend the fatherless, Plead for the widow.
'Come now, and let us reason together,' Says the LORD,
'Though your sins are like scarlet,They shall be as white as snow;
Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool.'

This is the striking difference between the righteousness which is by faith and that which is pursued by religious works. Tisha B'av is about the past. The destruction of temples that human hands can build. The future, however, is a vision of being made clean, whole and really holy. Not our man-made attempts at righteousness, but the righteousness of hands that truly are clean, and of lives that are just and seek justice for others.

So close and yet so far

Today, I found also some interesting things on a Hassidic web site. In teaching on my Torah portions, the "Chassidic Masters" note that Deuteronomy is, in fact a 37-day long speech by Moses that ends on the day of Moses' passing.

The Sages of Judaism explain that in the first four books of the Torah, Moses is transcribing everything as he received it from God. However in Devarim, or "Words" (Deuteronomy), Moses is recapping the major events and laws in his own words. This, they note, is because God is seeking human partnership - the "partner in creation" that God has desired from the creation of mankind.

In the book of Devarim (Deuteronomy) they explain,

"a human being, Moses, attains a level of identification with the Divine wisdom and will on which his "own words" are completely in harmony with their Divine content -- so much in harmony that they are no less G-d's words than those which G-d dictated in the first four books."

Further, they write of the "partner in creation" that God desires:

A free, independent partner, whose choices are fully his own....Because G-d wanted true partners to His endeavor, not a bunch of employees and messenger boys (He had plenty of those already when He created man -- they're called "angels").

In discussing the Haftarah portion of Isaiah 1:1-3:27, the Chassidic teaching notes:
On the ninth day of the month of Av ("Tish'ah B'Av") we fast and mourn the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.

A model display of the Temple

"The Shabbat preceding the fast day is called the "Shabbat of Vision," for on this Shabbat each and every one of us is granted a vision of the third and final Temple, according to Chassidic master Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev. It's significance is expressed in the following metaphor:

'A father once prepared a beautiful suit of clothes for his son. But the child neglected his father's gift and soon the suit was in tatters. The father gave the child a second suit of clothes; this one, too, was ruined by the child's carelessness. So the father made a third suit. This time, however, he withholds it from his son. Every once in a while, on special and opportune times, he shows the suit to the child, explaining that when the child learns to appreciate and properly care for the gift, it will be given to him. This induces the child to improve his behavior, until it gradually becomes second nature to him -- at which time he will be worthy of his father's gift.'

"A basic tenet of our faith," the Chassidic rabbis write, "is that 'The entire earth is filled with His presence' (Isaiah 6:3).

Acknowledging that Israel "failed to measure up" twice the Temple was destroyed.

"So G-d built us a third temple. Unlike its two predecessors, which were of human construction and therefore subject to debasement by man's misdeeds, the Third Temple is as eternal and invincible as its omnipotent architect. But G-d has withheld this "third suit of clothes" from us, confining its reality to a higher, heavenly sphere, beyond the sight and experience of earthly man."

"It is a vision of the Third Temple in heaven -- in its spiritual and elusive state -- like the third set of clothes that the chld's father has made for him but is withholding from him."

Under a sub-heading titled "The Wearable House" the rabbis comment on Rabbi Yitchak's metaphor:

"Why, we might ask, are the three temples portrayed as three suits of clothes? Would not the example of a building or house have been more appropriate? The house and the garment both 'house' and envelop the person. But the garment does so in a much more personal and individualized manner."

"G-d chose to reveal His presence in our world in a "dwelling" -- a communal structure that goes beyond the personal to embrace an entire people and the entire community of man. Yet the Holy Temple in Jerusalem also had certain garment-like features. It is these features that Rabbi Levi Yitzchak wishes to emphasize by portraying the Holy Temple as a suit of clothes."

"G-d chose to reveal His presence in our world in a "dwelling" -- a communal structure that goes beyond the personal to embrace an entire people and the entire community of man. Yet the Holy Temple in Jerusalem also had certain garment-like features. It is these features that Rabbi Levi Yitzchak wishes to emphasize by portraying the Holy Temple as a suit of clothes."

In the traditional understanding of Judaism, as my Messianic Jewish friend Asher Intrater recently pointed out, salvation is viewed in national terms, whereas in Christianity salvation is viewed in personal terms. Do you see how very close this Hassidic teaching is to grasping what God is up to in terms of the salvation of Israel - a personal salvation on the basis of faith in His Messiah on a national scale?

I was also quite astounded by the grasp of these Hassidic teachings as to God's desire from the Garden of Eden to today, to bring forth a people willing to so align themselves with His Will that He could entrust to them the power of creating His will on earth through His Davarim, His words - making His Words our own. I have difficulty reconciling the teachings of these "Chassidic Masters" with the photographs of Haredim persecutors - those throwing rocks at secular Israelis in Jerusalem, as well as those who have waged a relentless campaign of harassment of the Messianic believers in the Negev.
Haredim Protesters in a stalking vigil outside the home of a Messianic Jewish widow with several children in Arad

It also strikes me how close we can be so close to the Truth and still be so far away from it. To bridge the gap that stands between understanding what God is working to bring forth in us and seeing it come to pass, is the revelation of Yeshua and being one in Him.

Over the past few days as I contemplated how many Jews in the Messianic movement are being lured out of the faith by Judaizers, I have thought that reason this is even possible is because of over emphasis been placed on the traditions and culture of Judaism. One thing is important: Yeshua, and our continual abiding in Him.

The Messianic movement is a relatively young one, really only starting to bloom in the same year that Israel recaptured control of Jerusalem. The return of a remnant of faith among Jews is on a parallel track with the restoration by God of the Jews to the land of, and then rebirth of nation of Israel. This is the literal fulfillment of the Ezekiel vision of the valley of dry bones and like the government of Israel, the restoration of a Jewish branch of the faith in Jesus has also been coming incrementally.

What I am saying is, that because the Messianic movement is a fairly 'new creation' it has been growing up. Part of the growing up process has been the reclamation of its Jewish identity. That has meant Messianic Jews have had to throw off the insistence of both Christians and Jews that to believe in Yeshua - the Jewish Messiah - meant losing their Jewish identity. It is not so but the battle continues in both groups. Little by little Christians are realizing this is not so, and also little by little so are Jews. No where is this more discernible than in Israel among secular Jews.

As with any new revelation, it seems we always go from one extreme to the other before we finally find the Divine balance. These early decades of the Messianic movement have rightly sought to recapture Jewish identity for Jewish believers in the Jewish Messiah, Yeshua. However, when we see the movement beginning to lose Yeshua in the process of regaining traditional Jewish identity, then it is high time for a course correction.

Wherever Yeshua is not the primary focus - and our abiding in Him to the point of our transformation into His likeness - we will be susceptible to losing people to other things. This is just as true in the Christian churches as it is in the Messianic synagogues.

We must determine not to serve up 'flavors' of our faith instead of training all eyes on Yeshua, so we may become what we are beholding. Truly He is our Temple model.

Israeli Messianic worshipping

A serious question for Israel supporting Christian ministries

2009-08-03T07:25:00.000-07:00

Called from the nations to stand with Israeli Believers

Here is a serious question for Israel supporting Christian ministries – one of those speaking the truth in love type questions. I understand how much love, zeal and good intention is behind the efforts of many Christian ministries to raise awareness and support of Israel, but why isn’t there more inclusion of actual indigenous Israeli ministries in these efforts?

It is amazing to me how many “Israel Prophecy” conferences are held each year and few ever feature any of the Israeli prophets or indigenous ministries. What are they? Chopped liver? A potted plant in the corner of the room?

How can we have prophecy conferences about Israel where the Israeli prophets are not even given a platform? Don’t we see the irony of such a thing?

There are all sorts of conferences that the major thrust of the event is ISRAEL but RARELY are any ISRAELI worship leaders or pastors, evangelists, apostles, prophets or teachers even included in the featured ministry. Shouldn't the Church see the ones who are doing the work of the ministry in Israel?

This is an amazing slip-up on the part of the Israel-supporting Church! In all our raising of support for Israel, we are almost completely overlooking those who are ministering in the name of the LORD in Israel as Israeli citizens. How about we start exposing the Church to the faithful ministries of Israel?

Gosh, in this case a “token believing Jew” would be a vast improvement to our prophecy seminars and Israel support conferences! The Knesset guy may be the big name, but the 'big name' Israeli to God are those who are about their Father's business in Israel building the kingdom of His Son.

A congregational worship meeting in Jaffa

And while I’m meddling – all those taking tour groups to Israel, how about next time you make arrangements with one or more of the indigenous Israeli ministries and expose Christians to more than just the antiquities of Israel. Give them an introduction to some aspect of indigenous ministry going on in Israel. If you need suggestions, we can help.

An Israeli Messianic View of Tisha B'av - On the 9th of Av by Orna Greenman, A Sign & A Wonder Ministry

2009-07-29T09:03:00.000-07:00

In Hebrew we call it "Tish-ah Be-av" - the 9th day of the 5th month (called "Av"). On this month, the first and second temples were destroyed, and many other tragedies came upon our nation. This date is now a symbol of mourning and of a national disaster. Religious Jews fast on Tishah Beav, and this fast is as severe as the one we hold on the day of Atonement.

The fast of Tishah Beav is Biblical. The OT calls it "the fast of the fifth month". In the days of the prophet Zechariah, the Jews were busy building the second temple. Some of them came to the prophet, to inquire whether there is any need to observe this fast, since the temple was being restored (Zech. 7:3).

I have a feeling that Zechariah's answer surprised them. It was sharp and clear: "what were you fasting for all these years, since the first house was destroyed? You think you don't have to fast anymore just because the house is being rebuilt? Guys, don't you understand - it is not about a ruined house. It is about ruined hearts. If you were fasting in order to find favor with me, you would have taken care of things that are precious in my sight - you would have put an end to your baseless hatred towards one another, and especially stopped the oppression of widows, the fatherless, the aliens and the poor" (see 7:4-11).

Photo of an ancient mosaic by Marty Shoub in Israel

Zechariah is basically rebuking the people for thinking that the first temple was destroyed for no special reason. As if the Lord is an arbitrary God, who sometimes chooses to turn His face from us and enable enemies to trample us, for no seeming reason. The prophet makes it clear that it is the people's behavior that has brought the ruin of the house and the following exile, and that this is what they should fast for, if they do not want history to repeat itself.

Good to know that Zechariah promises that the day will come, when all the fasts which commemorate national disasters will turn into cheerful feasts (8:18). But this time has not come yet. Baseless hatred and exploitation of the poor and the needy are everywhere. Our nation does not understand yet how crucial to our health is the way we treat those who live in the margins. Even among the believers, the emphasis is mostly on those who are capable. They are called "leadership material" and they are considered to be those who are worthy of investment.

But with the rapid changes around the world, it becomes clearer that this world is on the threshold of a major shift - that things will never go back to what they used to be. Days are coming where we will have to believe God for our daily bread literally. I am not afraid of these days, since the world will not be the only place that will change. When evil will become more clear and prevalent, so will God's presence. We may see mana coming down from heaven in creative ways, as God will make sure that His children are well fed and provided for.

But we will need forerunners to march before us in this battle and encourage us to believe that "Yes, He Can". That He does mean what He says. Those forerunners are already being trained now. They are all over the place, in our midst. Those are the brothers and sisters, who are right now learning to rely on Him for their daily bread. Who need daily miracles. Whose God's presence is the only relief from their loneliness and poverty. Who dare to lift their eyes higher than circumstances, and call upon His various names. Most of them are poor and needy, and many of them are widows and fatherless.

This is what our ministry in Ot U'Mofet is all about. God did not call our team to focus on humanitarian aid, as much needed as it is. He called us to teach those He brings to us, to lift their eyes up and allow Him to be what He loves to be - God. All in all. Their providor and husband. The one who brings forth water in impossible places.

The ninth of Av starts this evening. Religious Jews will go to the synagogue and lament for the loss of the second temple and for the other hardships that struck our nation through history.

I will take the next 24 hours to read the book of Lamentations and cry to God for the restoration of a pure and undefiled worship in this nation. I will pray that He will restore it in the body, so that we won't focus so much on temples and buildings and restoration of stones, but on the things that are precious to His heart. I will also pray that this attitude will spread wide into all the levels of the Israeli society, who has become so secular and capitalist. I will take the time to interceed for the many women we have ministered to through the 6 years of our ministry, and will ask the Lord to help them lift their eyes from the enormous mountains they are facing, and use their hardships to build real tabernacles in their own hearts.

If the Lord puts it on your hearts, please take this opportunity to pray along these lines.

Orna Greenman and Ot Of'Mofet (A Sign & A Wonder) ministers to orphans, widows and single parents in the Body of Messiah in Israel. Her website is Restorers of Zion

Pushing the envelope a little further on the 9th of Av

2009-07-28T12:56:00.000-07:00

An Israeli minister wrote me in response to the recent article I sent to my mailing list on the 9th of Av and the groups that push the envelope on causing all out war over the Temple Mount.

At first I was going to just stay out of this, but I think as a watchman that I will push the envelope a little further on this issue of the 9th of Av.

Since I did not ask permission of the Israeli minister to use his private response to me, I am only going to take an excerpt from it that I want to get into further and not identify him.

"If I may add my 2 agorot worth: Jewish believers need to stop being sentimental over the destruction of the two temples on Tisha b'Av. God is moving on despite the sin of His people which brought about the destruction. As you said, He is building His Temple now without hands in the Body and Life of the believers, and is we [especially] Jewish believers prefer weeping with still unrepentant Jewish people rather than giving glory to Jesus/Yeshua, who Himself prophesied and gave the reason for the 2nd Temple's destruction, then we, too, are focusing too much on ourselves and our culture, and not enough on Him who crosses both."

My response: I think some people thought I was just being 'mean' but as long as any of us sees ourselves primarily as a victim, then we never are able to overcome.

Even if we are redeemed by the Blood, if we don't let the old things pass away we will never be able to walk as the new creation in Him. I see it over here a lot - in the Messianic congregations there is more of a desire to relate to the Jewish community than there is to walk in the newness of life in Messiah. Is it any wonder that so many in the American Messianic congregations are walking backwards into unbelief even sacrificing faith in the Deity of Yeshua to their desire to be more orthodox?

You are so right about the sentimentality. If I annually pick at the wound on the date of a horrific event in my life, building a shrine to my wounding, it is very unlikely that I will ever truly receive the healing the Lord offers me for it. Healing is available, but we have to receive it. I know this in my own life and believe it applies to the corporate woundings, too.

I read somewhere last week - can't remember exactly where - but about some Black leaders who talked about how wearied they became of every time they would go to an event, there would be forgiveness ceremonies, and how they got tired of every meeting being, 'Will you forgive us, the white man, for what you've suffered?' I'm sure some never tire of being in that position because there is a perverse kind of power in always being recognized in your victim-hood and wounds. The problem is that until we are ready to move on from there, we are stuck there.

I know it is important to teach those who are ignorant of the evils that have been done to the Jewish people - especially to those in the Church who are clueless, but we can't stay there continually rehearsing those things. We will never progress and we will keep those Christians from progressing, too. There are better things in store for us but we have to allow our souls to be healed; to forgive and to move on into the things He has in store for us as one people.

The Full Picture

2009-07-28T11:31:00.000-07:00

This picture was taken in late 2005 in Jerusalem next to the Church of All Nations in "the garden of Gethsemane". There is an olive grove behind a Jerusalem stone wall that may be opened to tourists. On the wall near the entry gate is the sign above, which if you have trouble reading it, says,

And the disciples forsook Him and fled.
Mark 14:50

Whoever is daily prepared to lose his life
will be faithful to Jesus in the time of
testing even at the cost of his life.

One of the most treasured things I personally know from experience about Yeshua is His willingness to restore lost sheep. I know this because He said to me what He said to Kefa/Peter in a dark night of the soul: "I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers."

This sign reminded me of that instance in my life, and I am glad the picture showed up in my desktop Slide Show today as a reminder once again. Times of testing will come, but if our faith does not fail, we will be made of greater use to our LORD.

The Spirit of the Law

2009-07-26T15:35:00.000-07:00

One of the ancient churches in Jerusalem, where the spiritual warfare of three major world religions wrestle.

Generally, I believe most Christians have the idea that "the law" (which actually means, "the instruction") is a terrible thing. Obviously it was only a stage in the progressive revelation of God's standards to us, and the covenant we have in the blood of Jesus is superior - in that the Spirit of the Lord actually lives in our hearts making it possible for us to be transformed to the point we are living according to God's standards of holiness. Just knowing what God's standards are does not give us that power, but the indwelling Holy Spirit can if we access what is available to us.

That doesn't mean we automatically make room for the Spirit of the Lord to take control in our hearts. Some receive the Lord as Savior, consider it all they need and go right back to living like they were. Maybe they don't go out honky-tonking anymore, but they certainly give the Holy Spirit a very tiny space in their hearts to dwell in because they retain control of the rest.

The plan of God is not for our hearts to have a tiny little closet of space for the government of the Spirit - He wants to take every spiritual square inch of our hearts so that our lives are entirely governed by the Spirit of God.

The thing about "the law" is not just a collection of do's and don'ts. If a person really studies the Torah through the eyes of the Holy Spirit, you will begin to see God showing us how He judges situations. When Yeshua was walking through Israel in His ministry, He was criticized and marveled at for His interpretation of the Torah - because He understood the spirit behind the judgments. He did not come and say, 'The Torah of God is a useless bunch of rules, forget about them.' No, the scripture says He came and fulfilled every "i dot" and "t cross". He just did it not according to man's misguided - Spirit-less - interpretations of God's standards, but by the SPIRIT underlying the instruction.

Paul said, 16 "if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good....22 For I rejoice in the law of God in the inner man, 23 but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members.

24 Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.

The point of all this is that Paul is talking about believers who practice sin. He is not saying that "the Law" is just something to beat us up with or hold us in bondage to, he is saying that it is a witness against us that we are practicing sin...even as believers.

This is a man who knew what the Torah said, unlike many Christians who never read that part of the Bible because they think it is irrelevant to them. But none of the apostles said it was irrelevant. The things they said about "the Law" were primarily to people who had completely missed the spirit of God's instructions in the Torah and to who had erected man-made "fences" to make sure they didn't get anywhere close to violating God's instructions. They added layers of prohibitions that God did not command as an extra layer of distance from what God did command. In these additions they completely missed the principles of justice - the very spirit of holiness and justice that God was conveying in those instructions.

I have to laugh at many Christians who are the most adamant about putting down "the law" as something evil and imprisoning. (I mean, considering it was God who wrote them with His own finger for Moses, how can we begin to believe that? The rest of the instructions He merely dictated for Moses to write down verbatim.).

Recently I heard a person whose job it is to give exhortations when taking offerings say (paraphrasing), "We give our tithes, but not like a religious thing - not like under the law to tithe." Oh?

Of course, tithing is not a "religious" thing, it is a spiritual thing. Sowing and reaping, seed time and harvest. The command to tithe is an acknowledgment of God as the source of our increase and it is to be used so there will be food in the house of the Lord.

Malachi 3:10 is God speaking: 10
Bring all the tithes into the storehouse,
That there may be food in My house,
And try Me now in this,”
Says the LORD of hosts,
“If I will not open for you the windows of heaven
And pour out for you such blessing
That there will not be room enough to receive

Why would anyone consider this a burdensome "law" instead of a promise of God?

In Exodus 35, God told Moses to take an offering of the people from all "of a willing heart". In verse 21-22 Then everyone came whose heart was stirred, and everyone whose spirit was willing, and they brought the LORD’S offering for the work of the tabernacle of meeting, for all its service, and for the holy garments. They came, both men and women, as many as had a willing heart....

Doesn't sound like "a religious" thing to me.

God is not a different God from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant, He is just revealing WHO HE IS little at a time, as man can begin to learn and grasp His nature and character. Jesus was the ultimate expression of the nature of God, but that revelation was built upon the foundation of the Old Covenant prophets as well as the New Covenant apostles. Sometimes in our arrogance, we try to delete the whole revelation of God's nature and character revealed in the Hebrew scriptures, and it is a mistake that will keep us from discerning the Spirit of God's standards of righteousness and justice.

When we look at what the Church is warned about being the conditions of the last days, it is lawlessness, not religious slavery to the Law. That is something we should think about.

A Look Back to the Present

2009-07-21T07:28:00.000-07:00

This week I was looking through my photo files and found this shot from the Dec 21, 2008 as then-candidate Netanyahu examined damage in Sderot done by Hamas rockets from Gaza.

This week it has been reported that the Obama administration has ordered a halt to a construction project in eastern Jerusalem at the Shepherd Hotel. Isn’t the name ironic? The man who is Israel’s elected “shepherd” will make decisions based on what is in Israel’s best interests which is why the Prime Minister came out in response to Obama’s demand by saying, “I would like to re-emphasize that the united Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people and of the State of Israel. Our sovereignty over it is cannot be challenged; this means that residents of Jerusalem may purchase apartments in all parts of the city.” Pray for both men to bow only to the Heavenly Shepherd’s desire for Jerusalem.

The morning I received an email from an Israeli leader that I have the highest respect for the consistent purity of his testimony and witness, Howard Bass in Beer Sheva. He too was looking in past files and came across a defense he had written in 1983 for how the Lord guided his decision as a ministry leader whether or not to take up arms in military service. He and his wife, Randi, had been in Israel about two years. I believe it is a living, spiritual parable that speaks to similar issues that many of us are facing in this day. I urge you to read it and receive from the godly wisdom.

A Foreword to A Look Back to the Present
by Howard Bass, Yeshua's Inheritance Beersheva, Israel

While looking through some files, I came across one which was written in 1983. We had been in Israel a little over two years at the time of the writing. Since then, Randi and I have had four wonderful children, three of whom so far have finished or are still serving military duty.

One of the things which distinguishes our faith from religion is that we have a personal relationship with God our Father and the Lord Yeshua Messiah/Jesus Christ. There are some things which God has said, and inspired to be written for our instruction and learning, which are binding upon all believers, whatever stream of the faith we may be in. Departing from iniquity is an example. There are other issues, where there is more room for 'different strokes for different folks'. Our choices must, nonetheless, still be in accord with God's Word, whether for liberty or whether for personal convictions and/or taste. Food is one example of that.

Below is a 'defense' I presented in 1983 regarding what I believe I had received from the Lord for me regarding my military service in the Israeli Defense Forces.

Honestly, I had to learn a few things about the wise ways of our Father, and of the Lord of Hosts/Armies. I thought, and still do, that the issue of taking up arms in the military should be more open than it is as a possible option for believers. The Holy Spirit had to teach me that not all believers needed to lay down their weapons or refuse to take them. Unless someone KNOWS the Word of the Lord to him in such a situation, he will not be able to stand successfully against the opposition, whether from within, or whether from the authority of the State.

The New Testament leaves room for believers to, or not to, carry arms for military service to their nation. In Israel today, there is the accepted norm that when boys(and girls) finish high school, they immediately go into the military, without much thoughtfulness or teaching within the Messianic Body on the subject to allow our children to consider before the Lord as to His will for him or her.

As I said, we have three children who have already been involved in active duty, one of whom is an officer and who taught soldiers how to shoot! Another is in an elite combat unit and served in Gaza in January in the war against Hamas.

Nations have a right to wage war; they should have the objective to win sufficiently enough to deter future war with that nation. Believers attitudes and conduct, even in war, need to be shaped by our being of another Kingdom not of this world, even while in it. Countries are not Christian. Believers can or can not carry arms while still serving their nation in military service. The question remains: What is the will of God for me? when dealing with major issues such as this.

Each of our children has his or her own relationship with Yeshua, and I am certainly glad for that! It is also a lesson for me about God's ways not being ours, and His thoughts not ours. A 'religion' or a cult will impose rules across the board on certain issues, like to young children or to slaves. The faith which was once for all delivered to the saints is lived out in a relationship as sons and daughters to our great God and Savior, who is bringing us to maturity. God is good, and knows each of His children personally.

A Look Back to the Present
Standing in Faith…According to Righteousness 16 Dec 1983

As many here know I have made an important decision concerning my service in the Israeli Defense Forces. I want to share some of the principles which have come out as a result of my decision, for we all fare trials of our faith in Messiah. We have a responsibility to stand in faith in order to bear witness of God in Christ, and not of ourselves or others.

From the very beginning--nearly eight months ago--that I took action by writing to the IDF explaining my position, according to what the Holy Spirit had made known to me, almost immediately I encountered opposing viewpoints from believers and others, who were unaware of my attitude or action. Yet I rested in my peace with God because I felt certain about what He had shown me.

Over the months, the Lord confirmed His Word to me, which strengthened and encouraged me, and for this I gave (give) Him thanks and praise. Looking back I can see His preparing me for stronger and direct opposition from the IDF itself, and more subtle testing of my obedience to faith from those nearer to me. All acted or spoke out of a genuine concern and with good intentions, and some even used the Scriptures. (I appreciated that the most actually.)

Let me emphasize that I appreciate very much the prayer support and encouragement I have received from all of you even though there is not complete agreement or understanding. God in His infinite wisdom will use us as goads for one another to challenge and to prove our faith and resolve, and to enable us to stand the greater trials to come in our sojourn towards the Promised Land.

It is not that we have exactly attained resurrection life or are already able to be perfect, but we are to follow after these in Messiah Yeshua. So I hope that by His mercy I have obtained grace to answer those who have challenged me with love in the assurance of the victory I have in Christ.

In Romans 14 it is written by inspiration of the Holy Spirit that anything not of faith is sin. Just last week as I was reading the Bible, one verse spoke out which could allow someone to take a different stand than I have and justify themselves. A seed of doubt entered my mind despite all that the Lord had spoken and shown to me through the whole of Scripture. This seed, if left unchecked, threatened to weaken my resolve to stand firm upon the truth God had given me, and to be lukewarm is most distasteful to our Lord.

So I asked Him to help me out, even to the point of providing me a proper way of changing or modifying my position. This time He used another brother, not aware of my doubt, to encourage and strengthen me, as well as ministering to me through His word and through other believers who have taken a similar view. Our perfect Teacher and Father was preparing me to stand by the blood of the Lamb and the word of my testimony.

Our faith must operate along the distinct path which the Lord has for each of His elect, and which therefore we must accept as from Him. He has His mind for each one of us, and it is our individual responsibility to use the mind of Christ we have received both to know and to do His will. I cannot have faith for another, nor can another for me, insofar as our personal walk by faith in the Spirit is concerned.

Without faith, we cannot please God. And except there be works of faith to test it and give evidence of it, our faith is dead and not living, But what must our faith be subject to or based upon in order for it to build up the inner man and be pleasing to God? The Scriptures say that the righteous shall live by his faith-- his own personal faith. And we see that our faith must be subject to righteousness--our right relationships with God and with man--distinguishing between believers and unbelievers, between family and others, etc.

We are instructed in righteousness by the Scriptures--the inspired word of God--the truth. Except our walk of faith be grounded in truth, it cannot be a walk in the righteousness of Christ , and it will not be confirmed by the Holy Spirit. Anything we do in our life that is not anointed--no matter our intentions or opinions or our own ideas as to how to win souls for salvation; no matter how we allow ourselves to be deceived to justify or rationalize our actions-- can best be described as a filthy rag and will burn in the day of judgment of our works. Only that which is in and of Christ is able to be resurrected-- is able to live eternally and minister life to others. For God is a Spirit and must be worshipped in Spirit; and in fact, the Father is even now seeking those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth.

Faith is the reality of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen. Abraham believed in YHVH--the invisible, self-existent, eternal God--and it was accounted to him as righteousness. We are born again into a new life of righteousness. We are to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. God’s Kingdom is not of this world-- is not of that which is temporal or tangible or in opposition to His sovereign grace-- but of that which is above, unseen, spiritual, eternal.

Our faith must be based upon God’s word and brought to life in us and through us by the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit, for the word of truth alone can also kill and minister death. Truth must pass through the cross in order to glorify God in Christ Jesus.

If we are certain of what God has shown us-- and He cannot contradict His word or else there is no sure foundation-- then we can stand against the schemes of the enemy and overcome the trials of our faith and obedience towards God. Our most difficult trials often come through others whose God is also the LORD.

In 1 Kings 13 it is written of a man of God sent to prophesy against the ungodly ways of the king and the priests. The LORD also instructed the prophet not to eat or drink, nor to return by the same way by which he went. When he had finished his mission, he began to return according to God’s word to him. An old prophet heard of what the man of God had done and went looking for him. Finding him, he invited him to his house. The man of God repeated the word of God spoken to him, and the old prophet lied to him, saying that an angel spoke the word of the LORD to him also, that the man should return with him to his house. So he did so.

Perhaps the old prophet’s heart was with good intent. Maybe he wanted to know more about the man of God and what he had accomplished on his mission. But it was not what the LORD had spoken to the man of God himself. In his disobedience to the living Word of God, he wound up being eaten by a lion on his deterred way home.

We know who the roaring lion is, and he is not usually the Lion of Judah! If we do things leaning on our own understanding or according to our own will contrary to God’s revealed will for us, we too will meet the lion in the form of unrest, lack of inner peace, irritation, or anger when challenged, and our further usefulness will be impaired.

Jesus died for our sins. His blood cleanses us from all unrighteousness. He is risen from the dead in glory. Let us not make the cross of no account in our lives or testimony, or dishonor the price paid for our redemption and salvation. Let us believe the Word of God in faith, and seek the faith to believe when we lack it. Works of Christian faith are not works born of fear or uncertainty. Let us not strive to please men (for man is never satisfied), but rather live to please God. For even He has placed all of His faith in His Word and in the power of the blood of His Son to accomplish His eternal purpose. Surely we can trust Him to take care of us.

amen, brother! DD

Storms, Boats and Sleepers

2009-07-10T12:28:00.000-07:00

Someone commented recently on Jesus’ ability to sleep in a boat crossing the Sea of Galilee during a terrible storm that He “could sleep because, in His world, there are no storms."

Sounds good, but Jesus was in our world. Of course there were storms in Jesus' world because He was in our world! That was the point of Him being here. He was here as a human being to show God's people what is possible for human beings in this realm. We may progress in our faith that we too can walk fully trusting in God as He did but this is a journey of experience, not just a set of faith principles.

The thing that concerns me about this statement is that no one should think that a denial of the existence of storms is truly what was meant by “resting” in the midst of storms. That only works until the storm bursts through our self-deception.

I have been in the ‘faith movement' long enough to know that too many think faith is the focal point, and that living the successful Christian life is mostly just a matter of thinking rightly. Having faith and speaking faith are wonderful foundational truths but the pit fall is that many people put their faith in their own faith. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. So we believe what the word of God says and our belief becomes trust that grows out of our experience with God’s faithfulness. Our faith is in God, not in faith.

There may be no storms in Heaven, but in this world, brother, there are storms! Even Jesus experienced storms. Hebrews 2:17-18 says, Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren....For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted.

If there were no real storms to test His 'mettle' then in that way Jesus was not like us. I believe He was like us in every human way otherwise we could not follow in His example. He would have an advantage that we could never rise to. He was made like us so we could see an example of what we can become.

When we understand that His purpose in coming into our world as a “son of man” was to show us what is possible if we allow ourselves to be transformed in His likeness - that changes things! How we look at things changes – including how we look at the things which we suffer and the storms that come against us in life.

Jesus could sleep in the boat during a terrible storm because He was fully persuaded that God had sent Him here with a mission that would be fulfilled. No storm in hell could prevent Him from fulfilling that mission.

I don’t think we appreciate enough how Jesus grew up even in the things of God as a “son of man”. I don’t believe He entered this world all-knowing, but that Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men. We should not mistake the point that Jesus came to live like us and be like us in all of the experiences of human life.

In the incident in Jerusalem when Jesus was twelve and had stayed behind listening and asking questions of the teachers in the temple, when his parents confronted him frightened and anxious at having lost him, it says that he went back to Nazareth with them and “was subject to them.” He had answered them that He must be about His Father’s business, but He wasn’t teaching in the temple, He was there learning and asking questions of the teachers of the Word of God.

He was submitted to his earthly parents and human teachers as any normal boy, a true “son of man.” I believe that Jesus learned from the scriptures what His destiny in this world was. He learned like we learn from the word of God and from the storms of human life.

Storms of Life God's Teaching Tools

Even though the four gospels do not speak many details of Jesus’ youth, he undoubtedly experienced the normal ‘storms’ of a human life. How about the storm of being known as a “bastard” child? I am purposely not sugar-coating that word because it was probably not sugar-coated in his life growing up. Jesus probably heard himself called that more than once or twice.

Even Joseph, if he had not been visited by an angel telling him it was okay to stay with the Spirit-impregnated Miriam, would have “put her away secretly” “not wanting to make her a public example.”

There is not a lot of detail about Joseph’s influence on Jesus life but we do know he acted as a true father to Him, and to Jesus' brothers and sisters. We know that Joseph taught his a son the trade of carpentry, a time honored tradition of fathers giving sons training in how to make a living. However, by the time Jesus entered His ministry at there is no more mention of Joseph and it is likely because Joseph had already died. That is a storm in the life of any son at any age, much less a son under the age of thirty.

Scripture says that Jesus learned obedience from the things which He suffered. Not just the things that He suffered at the end of His life, but the things He suffered throughout His life. Like all of us, Jesus learned obedience as a “son of man”. He was not only the “Son of God" but truly a "son of man."

That Jesus could sleep in the boat during the midst of a terrifying Sea of Galilee storm does not mean that He entered this world ‘above it all’. What good would the faith He was modeling to us be if that were the case?

And no one can really fake faith like that. We might be able to fake being ‘above’ all the smaller storms of life, but there is a 'perfect storm' that will show up in all of our lives if we are just faking it. Faith has to be real and to be real it has to spring from trust. That kind of faith is built on believing what God’s Word says and seeing the trust-worthiness of God demonstrated in our journey of life.

Jesus was not just dropped down into our world knowing everything from the start to the finish. He had purposely laid all-knowing-ness aside in order to learn as we do - being made like unto us in all things “that He might be a merciful and faith high priest in things pertaining to God.”

He learned God’s plan for His life the same as we do, through the scriptures, which He said in John 5:39 “the scriptures…and these are they which testify of Me.”

Jesus was able to sleep in the boat because He had seen in the scripture what was written of Him. He knew his death was not going to come in an accidental boat capsizing, but it would come as the sacrificial lamb of Pesach/Passover. He could sleep because He knew God was not going to let a storm interrupt the plan that was conceived before the foundation of the world (Rev 13:8).

Paul’s stormy boat ride

We can see the same attitude in the apostle Paul when the boat that was bringing him in chains to Rome after being arrested in Jerusalem was shipwrecked in the Adriatic Sea (Acts 27). Paul knew he had a destiny – a specific mission from God that he was going to carry out, so no shipwreck could claim his life.

After the ship was broken up on the reef and all the people on the vessel safely made it to the shore of an island, Paul’s faith would again be tested by facing certain death. As he gathered wood on the beach for a bonfire and a highly poisonous snake bit him, Paul could just shake it off because he had a specific word of the Lord of God’s purpose for him in Rome. Nothing from hell or on earth could cut him off from completing his destiny.

The thing is that we grow into trusting God through experience. We come to know what God's purposes are for us and the things we are destined for that hell cannot cut off. We don't get there without lots of experiences which grow our understanding and trust of God - and we sure don't get there in denial that storms exist (or that snake bites can be deadly)! I have seen this approach in the faith movement over the past few decades and it is something that has shipwrecked the faith of many because in this world, there are storms.

If we don't know how to process the storms that hit our lives - if we don't know that there is purpose for our good in the storms and it doesn't just mean that 'our faith wasn't strong enough' or God doesn't care - then storms will be able to wipe us out. Storms will be able to shipwreck our faith if we have the expectation that our lives are supposed to sail along in a storm-less sea. Our faith is not in our faith, our faith is in God.

Paul did not always sleep peacefully in the bottom of a storm tossed boat. He not only learned to trust God for his safety, but he also received a specific word of the Lord that the ship was not going down. Paul was a great man of faith, but he grew into that just like the rest of us. He wrote in 2 Cor 1: 8-9:

“For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of our trouble which came to us in Asia: that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life. Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead, 10 who delivered us from so great a death ..."

Paul LEARNED through the storms in his life to not trust in himself but in God....and that "no weapon formed against him could prosper" because the Lord had spoken to him a destiny to fulfill.

All the storms pointed to Paul's mission

So by the time that Paul was carrying the contributions from the churches to the Israeli Body of Messiah in Jerusalem (Acts 20), all the prophets along the trip were prophesying warnings to him that he would be arrested in Jerusalem. I believe this is where Paul's trust in God to take care of him was finally perfected. This is where he underwent the major test of trust in God with his life. Would he trust and press in despite the danger or drawback to safety?

Imagine that - every prophetic person he ran into was saying, 'Paul! Don't go! They are going to put you in chains - I am seeing it in the Spirit.'

But Paul told them, 'Quit making me cry. I am bound by the Spirit to complete this journey, to fulfill this mission no matter what anyone sees awaiting me. This is my destiny in the Lord; this is my mission directly from the Lord. Can I be turned from fulfilling it just because it will mean arrest and chains on my legs?'

How could Paul be so certain? Remember what he said to the sailors when they all feared for their life because the storm was so great against the ship?

Acts 27:22-24 And now I exhort you to be of good cheer: for there shall be no loss of any man’s life among you, but of the ship. For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve, [none other than Jesus] Saying, Fear not, Paul; you must be brought before Caesar: and, lo, God has given you all them that sail with you.

Paul could have confidence and trust because he had a direct promise of the Lord about his mission. Anything that appeared threatening to him, he could view in light of that word of the Lord. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Even our ability to really hear when God is speaking specifically to us from His word is a God-initiated gift.

Paul was not pretending the threat did not exist, but he understood that the mission he had been given could not be cut off no matter how threatening things looked. He trusted that God was able to keep him safe.

Paul's salvation experience did not make him an automatic ‘Super-Faith Man’. Look at all the things that happened to him during his ministry; these are what brought Paul to that level of trusting God at His Word. As he writes in his own words:

2 Cor 11:23-28 Are they ministers of Christ?—I speak as a fool—I am more: in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequently, in deaths often. From the Jews five times I received forty stripes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness—besides the other things, what comes upon me daily: my deep concern for all the churches.

What faith preachers today give that kind of confession? Doesn’t sound like much of a victory walk! But Paul was not ashamed of all these terrible trials that befell him. It was what he had to go through to develop the faith it would take for him to carry out the ultimate purposes of God without backing away from the dangers.

Jesus had the same options as Paul and His example was to answer, “Father, if You be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but Yours, be done.”

It was not a trouble-free life Paul lived in service to the Lord, but in his journey of faith Paul was learning that he could trust God's hand on him for good. In being a partaker of “the fellowship of the sufferings” of Jesus, Paul also learned to trust that nothing could snuff him out before he accomplished all that the LORD had spoken for him to accomplish.

I believe that when Paul made that last trip to Jerusalem, and all along the way prophets were telling him the awful things that awaited him and advising him not to go, I believe that journey was Paul's last great test of faith. Was Paul locked into God's purposes for his life, or would he retreat to a safer place? When he remained "bound by the Spirit" to go to Jerusalem despite the warnings, Paul locked into a level of faith most of us have not heard many testimonies about in our great faith gatherings.

It was not unlike the same thing that Jesus experienced. In one place Jesus said would not be going up to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles (Jn 7:6, 8) telling His disciples: "for my time is not yet full come."

How did He know that? He knew He was to become the sacrificial Lamb during the Passover Feast. This Feast of Tabernacles was not the time for Him to be delivered over to any threat against Him in Jerusalem. Notice, He did not put Himself presumptuously into life-threatening situations before his time. But how did Jesus know?

Jesus understood that it was death that waited for Him in Jerusalem but it was according to God's timing and that involved the Passover, not Tabernacles. He didn't move in presumption and He did not move in fear. Until His time had fully come, He trusted God in the situations that came upon Him, and He skirted walking prematurely into situations before God's timing.

When His time was approaching, Jesus knew and began preparing His inner circle for it, telling them "My time is at hand." (Mt 26:10) Jesus was coming to fulfill His purpose which was to die for the sins of the world. Until that time arrived, He could sleep in the boat during a storm with peace because He knew that was not the way His 'time' would unfold or be fulfilled. He knew there was a storm, but He also knew that there was no way any storm was going to take His life and snatch Him from the sacrificial death He would willing give Himself to.

Same way the mob in Nazareth that tried to push Him off a cliff posed no terror for Him. The townspeople were so crazed in a mob mentality that they pushed Him all the way from the synagogue to the edge of the cliff outside of town and when they got there, He walked back through them as if He was just another person in the crowd and not the one they were all trying to kill!

Jesus could have peace because He knew God did not send Him into the world to die like that on the very first day His public ministry began. He lived for God's purpose and no purpose but God's could stop Him.

Jesus knew this the same way Daniel was able to "hear" what Jeremiah's prophecy meant, hearing by the word of God (Dan 9:2),

“I, Daniel, understood by the books(scripture) the number of the years specified by the word of the LORD through Jeremiah the prophet, that He would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem.”

Jesus understood through studying the scripture and asking questions of the teachers, what God’s plan was for Him, just as Daniel understood the prophetic destiny of Jerusalem. As we hear the word of God, God quickens the word to us. It was the same operation in Jesus' life as it is in ours.

Like Paul, if we are going to fulfill our highest purposes in God, we are going to go through the kinds of 'storms' that leave us feeling like we have a sentence of death on our lives. We may experience being beat up and left for dead - if not physically, then emotionally. But there is purpose to every season of suffering we go through and the purpose is exactly what Paul said it was: that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God.

The scripture says that even Jesus learned obedience to God through the things which He suffered. We are not greater than our Master.

We do not pretend that the storm is not beating against us, but our experiences of God's salvation in all the storms of our lives will bring us to a place our highest level of trust in Him. When bad things happen to us in life, we can come out on the other side spiritually strengthened with deeper knowledge that God loves us and has faithfully watched over us with loving care. These storms are meant to work in us "an eternal weight of glory" if we will but believe and trust God , clinging to His purposes for us.

Jesus said that He would give us peace in the midst of the storm, not that He would give us peace without any storms. There are storms in this world, but He said, "Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."

Blessing Israel, 8th Anniversary of Israelprayer

2009-07-03T12:55:00.000-07:00

August will mark my 8th year of preparing the Weekly Summary of Prayer Requests from Israeli Ministries. I became a member of a Messianic congregation in 1992, so I have been learning 'what's what' for almost two decades. Here is where all that exposure to things-Messianic led me.

Israelprayer was born in 2001. The previous year I worked for a major American Jewish Christian ministry and saw firsthand how Christians who love Israel literally gave millions of dollars each year in an outpouring of generous hearts toward Israel.

It bothered me that while this ministry blessed unbelievers in Israel, it did not contribute to the indigenous community of Israeli ministries who struggled in hard circumstances.

Working there, the visual I had of that ministry was as if it were a dam blocking the flow of a river of Christian donations from reaching the Lord’s harvest fields of Israel. I struggled with that.

In my heart, I believe God has stirred up such a generous spirit in the heart of Christians for Israel "for such a time as this" for the purpose of blessing those and funding those, who are the Israeli witnesses of the Good News of Messiah to Israelis. Part of their testimony is to bestow the wealth of Christian generosity in the name of Yeshua/Jesus as they reach out to meet the needs of their communities.

There are many ways to bless Israel, but the highest form and purest understanding of the Lord’s heart is blessing those and through those who are carrying the salvation of Israel as their primary vision from the Lord. As Isaiah 52:7 said of these spiritual family members,

How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of him who brings good news,
Who proclaims peace, Who brings glad tidings of good things,
Who proclaims Yeshua (salvation),
Who says to Zion, “Your God reigns!”

It is one thing to stand united with Israel but it is another thing to stand with the Israeli ministries and congregations who are reaching out to their neighbors and friends throughout Israel with the testimony and power of Yeshua, who is Israel’s true and only Hope. There is no other door to Salvation even to Jews, and no other source of peace for Israel, but the reign of the Prince of Peace in the hearts of Jews and Arabs of the region.

A gathering of some of the indigenous Israeli Ministry leaders in 2003

So, in August of 2001 I resigned from that ministry, got a non-ministry job and started Israel Prayer. I began by compiling the prayer requests of Israeli ministries I was aware of - mostly the Israeli ministries associated with the Messianic congregation I attended. A small team of us began to meet each week to pray over the requests.

I wanted to reach out to more Israeli ministries and began to research and compile information about all the ministries I could find in Israel. I signed up for as many prayer letters as I could find. Sometimes our team would prayer over 20 pages of prayer letter requests!

After a year I set up a web site, Israelprayer.com – to be “A connecting bridge for the Church to the Israeli body of Messiah” and “To make known to the Church the urgent prayer needs of the Israeli believing community.” Year by year we have added subscribers to the mailing list until we now have people from all parts of the country and many nations praying in agreement with the Israeli ministries. (You can read more of the story here.)

The driving force behind IsraelPrayer.com is the revelation I first began to receive in 1991 of the Romans 15:27 indebtedness of the Church to materially support the Israeli Body of Messiah. Paul wrote,

“For if the Gentiles have been partakers of their spiritual things, their duty is also to minister to them (Israeli Body of Messiah) in material things.”

As I have read the Scripture over the years since that initial revelation of our duty, the Holy Spirit has opened my eyes to what an important and even critical emphasis the apostle Paul put on that truth. In Paul’s eyes its importance extended to the point of delivering himself into imprisonment in Jerusalem. This was the price he was willing to pay in order to model for us the necessity of carrying ministry support from the Churches to the elders – or ministry leaders - in Israel.

The Church contributions were not sent to the Israeli government leaders, nor the rabbis at the Temple, but were carried directly to the leaders of the Israeli believing ministries for the purpose of supporting the local community of believers and for the forwarding of the gospel in Israel.

This revelation has been my passion…and it has also been my sorrow as I have seen Christian generosity for Israel diverted from the Israeli laborers in the harvest fields to lesser blessings of Israel. Christians are giving millions times millions into Israel for everything from political support to planting trees with only a minuscule percentage reaching the indigenous ministries who are witnesses to the power of Yeshua’s salvation in the lives of Israeli Jews. Just being a “righteous Gentile” will not get many Israelis saved.

Consider that one popular Jewish “Fellowship” raises 78 million dollars annually from Christians to fund needs in Israel and none of that ever benefits the believer community or Israeli Jewish ministries. The Jewish Christian ministry I once worked for averaged an income of around 7 million annually for its programs but rarely – if ever – donated to Israeli ministries. That is quite a gap - 7 to 78 million, but it is an even greater gap for actual Israeli ministries. Perhaps the most well-funded of all the indigenous Israeli ministries has an annual income of only 2.6 million – but that is far above almost all of their fellow Israeli ministries.

If Christians sending donations to the famous rabbi’s fellowship only knew how much more spiritual return their donations would reap if the flow of their generosity only reached Israeli believer ministries instead. It makes me sad, but I believe a day is coming when that dam will give way to the will of God and the river of blessing will flow.

More to Israel than Ruins & Artifacts

2009-06-28T16:39:00.000-07:00

This is a sort of a follow up to a previous blog post, I know what it takes....

More to Israel than Ruins & Artifacts

There is a report that needs to be corrected
that has been circulating in the past few days
among Christian intercessors who have a love for Israel.

It is based on an article that appeared on World Net Daily a few days ago ‘Ark of the Covenant’ about to be unveiled? Ethiopian patriarch tells pope he will show artifact to world.

That article was posted on June 24 and by June 26th, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church was already back-peddling on its plans: Hark! Where’s the Bible Ark? Ethiopia’s Orthodox patriarch cops out on revealing plan for public viewing.

One claim reported in the second article to have been made by the Patriarch is scripturally inaccurate: "The state of conservation is good because it is not made from man's hand, but is something that God has made." That should be a huge clue to us as to the authenticity of the claim.

The Biblical Ark of the Covenant was fashioned by men according to specifications God gave Moses (primarily recorded in Exodus). Additionally, it was only a representation of a spiritual reality. The blood on the mercy seat represented the Blood of Jesus (Lev 16:14). We have in spirit and truth what the mercy seat in the Ark of the Covenant only foreshadowed.

Claims to possession of long lost Temple treasures like the Ark of the Covenant should always be greeted with a wait-and-see attitude even when made by ancient Christian denominations. Rarely do these claims turn out to be the truth – similar to the many claims that tingle and sway Christendom by the often claims of some to know the date of the Rapture.

We should be careful about looking backwards for an artifact that was prophetically pointing to a spiritual reality that we already possess through the Blood of Jesus. It may well be that the Ark was “lost” accidently on purpose by God so it would not be worshipped or in any way distracting our focus from the spiritual realities it was meant to prophetically communicate.

Even the rebuilding of the Third Temple which so many eagerly look into with excitement, is problematic because according to 2 Thess 2:3-4 this rebuilt Temple will be inhabited by a false Messiah. Is this really good news for us or Israel?

Which brings me to another problem with the emails circulated over the past few days, because information was added to the original WND article reporting that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu had just announced to the world that the temple will be rebuilt. This report is in error.

In reality, a leader of the Islamic Movement Sheikh Raed Salah ACCUSED Netanyahu of planning to rebuild the Temple on the Temple Mount. In a Israeli newspaper report on June 17th covering a speech made a Haifa University by the Sheikh, Ynetnews.com reported:

“Salah claimed that the government continued constantly to dig tunnels under the Temple Mount and the al-Aqsa Mosque, and that Netanyahu was planning to complete during his current term what he did not complete during his first one – ‘to dig additional tunnels under al-Aqsa and rebuild the Temple on the Temple Mount."

Additional confirmations from legitimate news sources: Weekly Standard and Jerusalem Post.

The accusation was meant to cause trouble for Israel and for Netanyahu, and it is not something that Christians should be excited to hear. As Christians, we have been listening far too much to the extreme religious viewpoint in Israel that seeks to rebuild the Temple no matter what the cost to people of Israel. Some readers may not like this, but unreliable religious sources include Arutz Sheva’s Israel National News and the frequent Christian TV guests, the Temple Mount Faithful. Yet Christians flock to those sources for news.

Even in the INN (Israel National News) coverage of the false accusations Sheikh Salah made against Netanyahu trying to create an uprising – yet another Islamic intifada – against the Israeli government, INN noted in its final paragraph:

“Jewish religion commands the Jews to rebuild the Temple as part of a Divine plan for the salvation of the Jewish people and the entire world, but Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is not considered observant, never has associated himself with efforts by Jews to pray on the Temple Mount.”

It is not like we are without spiritual brothers and sisters in Israel who are well informed on the true issues and developments. Why should we depend on those who oppose Jewish faith in Jesus to faithfully communicate to Christians what the important events and issues in Israel really are? Would it not make more sense for our prayers to be directed by the requests of the believer ministries in Israel rather than by the often religious misrepresentations of Israeli religious un-believers?

Even World Net Daily pays too much heed to sources in Israel who consistently report nothing more than quotes like this from Sheikh Salah that misrepresent the facts. The purpose? To influence Christians with the agenda of the Israeli religious unbelievers – those very same ones who actively oppose Jews in Israel who believe in Jesus. We should not allow ourselves to continually be stirred up by false reports and misinformation for the agenda of unbelievers in Israel – even if they are religious.

Isn’t it about time we started seriously considering the source of the reports we are heeding out of Israel?

It is easy: Turn your ear to our spiritual brothers and sisters in Israel who not only follow and report the important, reliable news, but who can also give you the spiritual eye-view of what the Lord is doing in the Israeli harvest.

If you are interested in such a thing, please review Arrows from Zion at my blog Israel Prayer Dot Com or sign up to subscribe via weekly email reports of Arrows from Zion with an expanded attachment of actual excerpts of prayer request from a diversity of Israel Ministries, with photos, contact information, links to teaching articles, news items and more.

Hoshi’ana

2009-06-22T18:18:00.000-07:00

Sunday before last I sat listening to a pastor talk about his walk with the Lord and marveled over the many ways our experiences were similar.

We both came to the Lord as children in Baptist churches, then in the same year - 1982 - both of us entered into another experience that radically changed our walk. As he put it, ‘I can’t explain what happened; all I know is, "I was blind and now I see."

That’s what happened to me, too, when I was introduced to the baptism of the Holy Spirit (Acts 19:2). The Word of God came alive to me. Suddenly I could actually understand what I was reading!

I had to laugh listening to this pastor’s story because we also shared the experience of having difficulty receiving our prayer language – praying in the Spirit, or praying in other tongues. He said it took him about six months after receiving the baptism of the Spirit before his prayer language finally broke through.

For me it was more like three months, but I was just as perplexed and frustrated as it sounds like he was. We were both open to receiving and really, as Baptists we had never even been taught against speaking in tongues, so we didn’t have to battle through any preconceived notions. Like him – and he was a pastor’s son – we just had never heard about praying in the Spirit or “tongues” at all.

Like him, I really wanted my prayer language, but it didn’t matter how many times people prayed for us, there was something going on that just blocked that release. He speculated that maybe it was his logical male thinking processes that blocked the flow, because he liked to have everything figured out mentally. Maybe. I can certainly relate to that approach to things in my life too.

Whatever it was that blocked the flow, it certainly wasn’t anything I did when my prayer language finally began to flow. I remember distinctly sitting at the drawing board in my bedroom doing some art project while listening to a praise tape when suddenly my prayer language just bubbled up within me and poured out of my mouth. It was a language I didn’t know and words I'd never heard. My prayer language came pouring out when I wasn’t even thinking about it and - WOW! - I was so excited. It was joy unspeakable.

This Saturday I attended Shabbat worship at a local Messianic Jewish congregation. It was my first time to attend their worship services but we sang the familiar songs of worship to the Lord that I have enjoyed over the past almost two decades in the Messianic Jewish movement.

I am always moved by the reverence of Messianic worship; it is a holy reverence. Very pure.

We began to sing a song, Holy, which I have since found out was composed by Christian inspirational composer Grayson Warren Brown, which goes,

“Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,
heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hoshi'ana! Hoshi'ana! In the highest.”

In Messianic circles, we sing the Hebrew “Hoshi’ana” instead of the transliteration “Hosanna” found in the passage of Matthew 21 that this wonderful praise hymn is based on.

As we were singing the chorus above, that’s when I remembered that when I got in my prayer language back in 1982, in the first string of words that was the word “Hoshiana”.

I remember it so clearly because I was so excited about finally receiving my prayer language that I immediately wrote down the words phonetically, "So I wouldn’t forget them." I had no idea that the word was a Hebrew word or what it meant, only that it was a beautiful word to my ears – like the word “ocean” only, o-she-ana.

It was many years later before I realized it was a Hebrew word, and it is not until now that realize there was surely significance to this being a first word in my prayer language. It is the only word in that first string of words in my prayer language that I can remember 27 years later. It is still a word that bubbles forth at times when I am speaking in my prayer language.

In the Hebrew “hoshi a na” means “save us!” – it is a salvation that is understood to come through the Messiah. In Psalm 118, a prayer that is recited on the last day of the Feast of Sukkot (The Feast of Tabernacles - a feast in part that is symbolic of the indwelling of the Spirit in the Body of Messiah), "hoshi'ana" is the cry of Israel for the promised Messiah to deliver them, to fulfill salvation for them as a nation.

Psalm 118: 25-26
(Hoshi’ana) Save now, I pray, O LORD;
O LORD, I pray, send now prosperity.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD!
We have blessed you from the house of the LORD.

Notice that the same words follow (“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”) that the crowd proclaimed to Jesus in what is known as His “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem:

Matthew 21:5 “Tell ye the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.”
6 And the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them, 7 And brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set him thereon.
8 And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut down branches from the trees, and strawed them in the way. 9 And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest.
10 And when he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this? 11 And the multitude said, This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee.

Isaiah 21:11 and Zechariah 9:9 are prophecies that were fulfilled in the exact words of the cries of the multitudes as Yeshua entered Jerusalem before His last Passover.

“Say to the daughter of Zion,
‘Surely your salvation (yesha) is coming; Isaiah 62:11

Even His name - Yeshua - is based on the Hebrew root word, yesha, which means "salvation." Isaiah refers to the Messiah as "salvation" and Zechariah refers to Him as Israel's "king."

Zechariah prophesies, (9:9)
“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your King is coming to you;
He is just and having salvation,
Lowly and riding on a donkey,
A colt, the foal of a donkey.

Just before He ascended into heaven before the very eyes of his disciples they asked Him, Acts 1:6-8,

“Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”

And He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

Some have found fault with the disciples asking Jesus when he would restore the kingdom to Israel as if it were an inappropriate question, but the truth is this was a perfectly appropriate expectation for His Jewish disciples to have. For their expectation was for the promise, for Israel’s hope in the LORD. It was the Messianic expectation of the Son of David who would be Israel’s deliverer and salvation.

Jesus did not rebuke them for expecting the restoration of the kingdom to Israel, answering them that the timing or season for the restoration of the kingdom to Israel was not for them to know but was the Father’s business. But their business was to receive the power of the Holy Spirit to become witnesses for Him.

In Matthew 23:37, Yeshua speaks to the crowd gathered in Jerusalem for the Feast of Passover,

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!’”

In this statement Jesus is saying that there is a time when Israel, in numbers large enough to be considered a corporate cry, will say, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” It will mark the official season that the Father will “restore the kingdom to Israel.”

This is what we are all pressing into, the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven and Jesus is saying that Israel will surely be included in that kingdom. It is the reason Isaiah 62 is a prophecy so close to the heart of every Messianic Jew and every Christian whom God has stirred with heart for the Jewish people to come to the knowledge of their own Messiah.

Isaiah 62
1 For Zion’s sake I will not hold My peace,
And for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
Until her righteousness goes forth as brightness,
And her salvation as a lamp that burns.
2 The Gentiles shall see your righteousness,
And all kings your glory.
You shall be called by a new name,
Which the mouth of the LORD will name.
3 You shall also be a crown of glory
In the hand of the LORD,
And a royal diadem
In the hand of your God.
4 You shall no longer be termed Forsaken,
Nor shall your land any more be termed Desolate;
But you shall be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah;
For the LORD delights in you,
And your land shall be married.
5 For as a young man marries a virgin,
So shall your sons marry you;
And as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
So shall your God rejoice over you.
6 I have set watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem;
They shall never hold their peace day or night.
You who make mention of the LORD, do not keep silent,
7 And give Him no rest till He establishes
And till He makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
8 The LORD has sworn by His right hand
And by the arm of His strength:
“Surely I will no longer give your grain
As food for your enemies;
And the sons of the foreigner shall not drink your new wine,
For which you have labored.
9 But those who have gathered it shall eat it,
And praise the LORD;
Those who have brought it together shall drink it in My holy courts.”
10 Go through,
Go through the gates!
Prepare the way for the people;
Build up,
Build up the highway!
Take out the stones,
Lift up a banner for the peoples!
11 Indeed the LORD has proclaimed
To the end of the world:
“Say to the daughter of Zion,
‘Surely your salvation is coming;
Behold, His reward is with Him,
And His work before Him.’”
12 And they shall call them The Holy People,
The Redeemed of the LORD;
And you shall be called Sought Out,
A City Not Forsaken.

Ask of Me, and I will give you The gentiles for your inheritance

2009-06-17T14:07:00.001-07:00

Ask of Me,
and I will give you
The gentiles for your inheritance,
And the ends of the earth for Your possession.
Psalm 2:8

For it pleased those from Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor among the saints who are in Jerusalem. It pleased them indeed, and they are their debtors. For if the Gentiles have been partakers of their spiritual things, their duty is also to minister to them in material things. Romans 15:26-27

Then everyone came whose heart was stirred, and everyone whose spirit was willing, and they brought the LORD’S offering for the work of the tabernacle of meeting, for all its service, and for the holy garments. They came, both men and women, as many as had a willing heart, and brought...an offering of gold to the LORD. Exodus 35:21-22

I know what it takes

2009-06-15T10:51:00.000-07:00

I know what it takes to prosper in an Israel-focused ministry: don't stand with the Body of the Lord within Israel.

By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the temporary pleasures of offense (to God), considering the reproach of Messiah greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward. By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured, as seeing Him who is unseen. Hebrews 11:24-27

Christians don't want to hear about them because if you want to become persona non grata to the Israeli government leaders and rabbis then all you have to do is take a stand with the indigenous Jewish believers in Jesus who are citizens of Israel.

Christians operating in Israel know this. Christians leading tour groups to Israel know this. Christians whose ministries are all about defending Israel in their own nations throughout the world know this. The ones who don't know it, are probably not even aware that there are 10 to 15,000 Jewish believers in Jesus in Israel.

Here is a community of faith that is growing daily and steadily since the Jews returned from their long exile from the "Holy Land" that is virtually ignored by all quarters of Christianity. For those who see the intention of God to return to Israel with salvation through Jesus, and for those who think Jews are of no further consequence to "the Church" – both are content to ignore our Israeli spiritual brothers and sisters.

To me, both segments of Christendom are suffering from a tragic blinding of spiritual eyes, because neither see their spiritual brothers and sisters in Israel as a missing piece of their own Body. Neither understands that this is a member of their own Body that so often suffers because of the lack of significance their existence holds to the rest of the Body of Christ.

1 Cor 12:24-26 says, "But God has so composed the body...so that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.”

It is amazing to me that in Christian circles, if one has a special heart for a people group it is accepted - EXCEPT if that people group happens to Jews. One group rejects that Israel has any significance whatsoever to * "the Church" today and the other group has been so misdirected from the real significance of Israel in God's plan today that it refuses to acknowledge the very work of the Lord that is happening in Israel - namely the harvest that is in progress.

This latter group has been misdirected to believe that God is primarily interested in the preservation of the borders of Israel or the politics of Israel in the international league of nations. I am not speaking against the advocacy of Christians for beleaguered Israel in the demonic hatred against that nation we see in international politics, but I am just saying as strenuously as I can: That is not God's first priority toward Israel - the salvation of the people is.

Photo/Graphic by Paul Lee for www.heartlight.org

If you put all the Christian organizations that support Israel into a pile and weighed them according to what their focus is - either concentrated near exclusively on political issues or those focused on supporting the Lord's harvest in Israel...well, let's just say that would be one overwhelmingly lopsided set of scales. Those who seek what God sees as the #1 issue among Israelis are few and far between.

My ministry seeks to serve the Body of the Lord in Israel so it really doesn't much surprise me that I struggle with lack of support like the ministries I serve. For seven years, I would not even put an appeal for material support on my weekly emails because I did not want to take away from support that would be directed to Israeli ministries. There are enough ministries prospering because their focus is Israel but who never support Israeli ministries. I simply did not want to be one of them.

I know what it takes to have a prosperous ministry for Israel: simply tell Israel-loving Christians what they want to hear about Israel. What they deem to be the most important thing is supporting Israel politically. The "urgent" need they have been convinced is helping Israel survive in a world that mostly hates the Jewish state.

Once drafted into that mission, the humanitarian need is emphasized. Groups that adamantly oppose giving the good news to Israelis are the most Christian-funded organizations in existence by millions and millions of Christian dollars given each year. While the leading Christian organizations that bring in donations for Israel projects are doing primarily political projects...or planting trees.

Sometimes, when I go to a gathering of Christians who see no significance to "the Church" today of Israel in the plan of God for the salvation of the world, I can't help feeling a little put off by the party atmosphere. Everyone just celebrating in the coming forth of the kingdom of God in earth through Body.

It's not that I'm against celebrating that wonderful truth; it is just that they do not seem to ‘get it’ that it is not going to happen apart from the coming together of the WHOLE Body of Christ - which most definitely includes the ever increasing community of faith in Israel.

What? You think you are going to get "to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" without them? The Body is going to come "to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man" without all of its body parts? I don't think so.

You may never think they are significant until you begin to see that we don't get to that level of kingdom living on earth without them.

One of the most outstanding observations I have heard on this came from an Israeli prophet, Asher Intrater, who was talking about why the Christian prophets are all over the place in predictions about the last days. They don't know where God is going with all this so they are aiming their arrows in every which direction. If you don't know where God has painted the 'bull's eye' then you don't know where to aim your bow and arrow.

When we all come into the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man - what is this perfect man but that which was referred to as God's intention in Jesus (Eph 2:15-16):

"so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross."

So, for those Christians who think they are going to enter the fullness of the kingdom of God without receiving the significance of what God is doing in Israel in terms of salvation of the Jews, think again.

And for those Christians who think that you don't have to worry about the salvation of the Jews because God is going to handle that Himself some by some other means in the midst of the Great Tribulation, think again. The plan of God couldn't have been more clearly stated in the Ephesians 2 passage - God is reconciling both Jew and Gentile "through the cross." There is no other way, just like Jesus told His Israeli brothers when He was walking among them.

All of the plan to bring salvation to Israel was known unto God from the beginning. When the gospel travels around the world from east to west, it ends up back in Jerusalem. The Grand Scheme of God has Israel in the beginning and in the ending, that is why Paul could explain the mystery it by revelation to us in Romans 9-11.

I started this piece by telling readers that I know what it takes to have a prosperous ministry about Israel, but I have spent my time telling you why that is not the most important issue to me. It is more important to me to stand shoulder to shoulder with my spiritual brothers and sisters in Israel who are living sacrifices to the purposes of Messiah among Israelis. Their reproach is going to be turned to great joy at some point. I want to be there rejoicing with them.

Back in the late 1980's when I didn't know anything about the existence of Messianic Jews or about Israel, Kim Clement prophesied over me that people will look at me one day and say, 'See she is as Miriam dancing with the Israelites.' I didn't know what it meant. Now I do.

Dancing with the Israelites at Tents of Mercy in the Haifa Bay Region in 2005

* Many Christians believe that “the church” was born in Acts chapter two, but the “congregation of the righteous” is a concept that predates the “ekklesia” of 120 that gathered in the Upper Room in Jerusalem in Acts 2. King David wrote in Psalm 1:5 about the “congregation of the righteous.” The “kehillah” congregation concept was certainly carried over into the “ekklesia” that is mentioned of the Jews who received the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Feast of Shavuot (Pentecost) in the Upper Room.

We Christians often think that the salvation plan of God began with us, but in fact, He initiated His plan as indicated in Rev 13, that the LAMB was “slain from the foundation/conception of the world”. From the beginning, God has been progressively revealing His plan to man. The Church is not God’s “Plan B” and Israel is not standing outside of God’s intentions for salvation.

In One Accord

2009-05-31T07:36:00.000-07:00

Today the Christian world observes Pentecost, which means "Fifty" and comes from Acts 2:1 when the Holy Spirit of the resurrected Lamb, the Messiah, was poured out on His disciples. Yeshua, or Jesus, had sent them specifically to Jerusalem to await the outpouring of His indwelling Spirit.

The reason behind calling this outpouring "Pentecost" may not be so clear to most Christians. It is because it is according to what God commanded Israel in observance of the Feasts of the Lord. These three Feasts are appointed by God to prophetically portray the seasons of the salvation of Israel.

Pentecost - Shavuot, or the Feast of Weeks - in the scheme of God's appointed Feasts for Israel was to be determined by counting 50 days after the Passover. The counting began the first day after the first Sabbath (which begins at sundown on Saturday night) following Passover.

According to Lev 23:15-16 - "You shall also count for yourselves from the day after the sabbath (after the Passover), from the day when you brought in the sheaf of the wave offering; there shall be seven complete sabbaths. You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh sabbath; then you shall present a new grain offering to the Lord."

The scripture Christians relate to the observance of Pentecost is Acts 2:1-4. The apostles and some of Jesus closest disciples, some 120 people, were gathered "together unanimously" in the upper room, as the translators say in "in one accord".

It is interesting that "there were two competing views at the time of Christ on how to calculate the day of Pentecost. For the Sadducees, Pentecost always fell on Sunday, while the Pharisees had it on various days of the week."

It is interesting to me because the Sadducees did not believe in a resurrection, but the Pharisees did. "The difference was that the Sadducees started counting 50 days after the first weekly sabbath and the Pharisees started counting 50 days after the Yearly Sabbath, ie Passover."

In other words, the Pharisees regarded "Passover" itself as the 'annual Sabbath' so they counting began counting days the next day. Since Passover was calculated on the lunar calendar it could come on any day of the week, so the Saducess would not start counting 50 days until the day after the weekly Sabbath.

I don't want anyone to fall down the rabbit hole of the complication of these countings, but only wanted to point out that it was interesting to me that the Pharisees who believed in the resurrection from the dead regarding the Passover as a special Sabbath, and the Sadducees who did not believe in a resurrection did not regard the Passover as a special "Yearly Sabbath" so they did not believe the counting of 50 days should begin the on the day after Passover.

Also, lest any of us grumble at how complicated everything is in the Hebrew scripture, let us remember these counting instructions were given by God. The Jews did not invent these instructions, God did, so He must have a good purpose for having do so.

Seeing how early in church history the date of observing "Easter" was changed so it would never fall on the same day as "Passover" to distance Christianity from its Jewish foundations, this may be a perfect example of the spirit of the law which forbids changing your neighbor's boundaries. (Deut 19:14 and Prov 22:28)

Yesterday, part of my Bible reading schedule had me reading in John 4, where Jesus is speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well (she is not Jewish and the Samaritans are looked down in Jewish society). Jesus told her,

John 4:22 You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.

23-24 But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

25 The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Anointed Christ). “When He comes, He will tell us all things.”

26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.”

I was struck by what Jesus said to the Samaritan woman, that the Samaritans worshiped what they did not know and, speaking as a Jew, He told her, "we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews."

This morning as I consider what it would mean for the worshipers of the Father to gather together before Him in one accord, I believe it means that we could not disregard that it was Jesus who said that what the Jews knew about the Father was important because "salvation is of the Jews."

The apostle Paul later wrote, Romans 9:3-5 (just before explaining the plan of God as it relates to setting aside Israel temporarily to extend salvation to all the nations)

"....my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Messiah came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.

In the Christian celebration of Pentecost, we are much like the Samaritan woman to whom Jesus said, you know not what you worship. We observe the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2:1 based on a holiday we have named after a number of days that we don't really know the significance of.

We don't have to get hung up on Judaism to acknowledge and know where we come from and how we are organically related to the foundation of our faith which God laid in a people He chose for that very purpose. Like in the 1970's epic movie, ROOTS, which connected Black Americans to their African heritage, all Christianity has a heritage that is rooted in the foundations God laid in Israel.

We are are organically rooted in and related to Israel of God and there remains a coming together of Jew and Gentile in the Messiah that is written of even in the New Covenant scriptures. Instead of denying the significance of our roots, we should embrace this heritage and seek to know it.

My prayer today, this day of Pentecost - the Jewish observance of Shavuot having been observed last Thursday night through Friday night) - is that we really would come together in one accord.

If we would cease all the arguments between the Jewish and Gentile members of the Body of the Lord - which is nothing less than the disciples as they are walking with Jesus arguing which of them would be greatest in His kingdom.

Today my prayer is that we go past the "in one accord" of former days and begin to reach into the "one new man" in Messiah that is our destiny.

Drinking the Kool-Aid, and another lesson In the Wilderness

2009-05-29T06:18:00.000-07:00

Over the past week, two men and a woman of God that I have the highest respect for sent out articles that I believe are right on target with the season we are in right now.

The first was Francis Frangipane writing, Time to Learn Righteousness is now. Whether on Wall Street or in the ranks of the most celebrated of the Church, "The sense of privilege, that one can live without accountability either to God or to the law of man, is being judged by the Lord. There are no special people who are exempt."

Francis writes, "...if we submit to God, our economy and culture will turn a corner into a time of renewed blessing. However, if we resist, if we persist in deceitful ways, we should not expect God to bless us. Thus, it is imperative to discern this season. We are in a time of increasing judgment. The world and its structures are in a collision course with the Kingdom of God."

That is what all this is about, the Kingdom of God. We are all excited about the manifestation of the kingdom in our world but the price for that manifestation are vessel sanctified (purified) enough walk in the glory of that kingdom. We can fool the people, but we can't fool God. If we are going to walk in the glory of the kingdom, then we better get real.

The second article was actually a prophetic dream recorded by Asher Intrater of Jerusalem and written in an article titled, Dream: Drinking the Cup of the Harlot.

In his dream, Asher saw a large gathering of Christians and Jews who were all drinking from cups containing a spirit of immorality that manifested in different ways with different people.

Asher writes, "All this 'spiritual adultery' was connected deeply with a spirit of 'deception.' The deception worked this way: When someone would drink the liquid, their face would be shiny; they looked good; they were smiling, attractive, positive, energetic, and prosperous. It all seemed so good, almost wonderful, like it was an 'anointing' of the Holy Spirit or some kind of charismatic gift. Yet it was demonic. That spirit deceived people, causing them not to see their sin and spiritual adultery. Almost everyone was caught up in it, so there didn't seem any way to correct the situation."

Sound familiar? There are a lot of people drinking the Kool-Aid these days, but God is committed to purifying us from those tendencies. We fool ourselves if we think God is okay with the exaggerations we indulge in to make ourselves appear more 'glorious' than we actually are.

Asher wrote of his dream, "There was a call to repent and to be delivered. The effect was like an explosion or an earthquake. Most of the people responded positively when directly confronted and were powerfully delivered. They had been 'caught up' in all the spiritual deception but hadn't intended to be. However there were a few people who had planned and worked on the distribution of the cups. They were selling them, and had done it on purpose....they refused to repent, and some of them dropped dead on the spot."

This is important, there are a lot of people caught up in spiritual deception that hadn't intended to be. God is not trying to destroy us for making mistakes, but He is committed to transforming us into the likeness of His Son.

Most of the people in Asher's dream did not want to be caught up in spiritual immorality or deception. Most jumped at the chance to be free when confronted with the truth. It was only those who were intent on personally profiting from the distribution of the little 'Kool-Aid' cups of deception who did not want to be set free.

Nevertheless, we should heed the example of a man who even though he had already been anointed by the prophet of God to be king over Israel, refused to put out his hand against the man who stood in that office currently. If you read through David's experience in the wilderness, he had many opportunities to destroy his enemy, King Saul. He did not because even though he had been anointed to be the next king of Israel, he knew it was God's business to take down the current king, not his.

We have to be very careful what we do in similar situations. There is a big difference in confronting spiritual immorality and deception, and trying to tear down and destroy those who are caught up in these things. We have biblical instructions for dealing with such circumstances, although many feel justified to push way past those instructions. They are deceived, as well, and will face their own calling to account by God.

The kingdom of God does not come by self appointed enforcers, it comes our hearts being prepared to carry more and more of the governing of the Spirit of the Lord.

Scripture says of Yeshua/Jesus that God gave Him the Spirit without measure, meaning an unlimited measure. (John 3:34) We, on the other hand, have been given a limited deposit - an earnest - of the Spirit towards the glory we hope for. That is why John the baptizer said, "He must increase, but I must decrease." (John 3:30)

So, our sanctification in the simplest terms is the transformation process that happens in us as the Spirit of the Lord increases in us. The apostle Paul explained this process as crucifying the old man - decrease of our ways - so we can "put on" the new man, the increase of the government of Jesus in our being.

Isaiah 9:7 says, "Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of armies will perform this."

For His "government" to increase without end, that means His government over the lives of individuals must increase. Jesus said, “The kingdom of God does not come with observation....For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.”

For the kingdom to come, the kingdom has to come forth within us. This means far more than healing miracles being performed, it means the people of God being truly given over to the governing of Jesus within their own hearts. We do that in limited measure, but a measure than grows in proportion to the increase of His glory within us. His glory comes into the places that are purified, sanctified and made ready for His presence to occupy.

Yeshua/Jesus made a very telling comment in John 14:30, "...for the prince of this world is coming, and he has nothing in me."

Jesus had the Spirit without measure - there were no hidden pockets of darkness in His heart that prohibited or limited the degree of the glory He could carry. We are not in that place. We have been given a deposit of the Spirit when we entered into relationship with God through faith in His Anointed.

This deposit of the Spirit is like the parable Jesus told His disciples in Matthew 13:33 “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened.”

To understand the kingdom of God, we must let His 'kingdom' remove the dark places remaining in our hearts, flooding every recess with the glory of His Light. Be prepared to hold back nothing if you desire unlimited measures of His glory and presence.

The final article I took note of last week was a vision given to Victoria Boyson, also a long time friend of Francis Frangipane. Victoria's article, titled My Beloved - A Vision, speaks of how the enemy's pursuit is driving us toward a radiant light that creates a glorious transformation in us.

Victoria writes, "The enemy is desperate to own, possess and use you for His own purposes. He will stop at nothing to deter you from your destiny in God - from your purpose and from oneness with your Beloved. He will use anyone or anything, even your own desires to keep you from Christ.

"The wounds the enemy inflicts and the dangers, which surround us, must bring us to desperate longing - we must run to Him believing He has something for us. When surrounded by darkness, we must not lose hope. Trust that He loves you and wants you for His own. He does."

Whatever place we happen to be in at this time, the Lord has a kingdom that He greatly desires we enter into fully. Whatever else we do, let us seek to enter into the things He has for us fully and in all truth.

We all have our moments.

2009-05-27T11:39:00.000-07:00

2 Cor 1:8 For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of our trouble which came to us in Asia: that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life.

Graphic by http://www.heartlight.org

2 Cor 1:9 Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead, 10 who delivered us from so great a death, and does deliver us; in whom we trust that He will still deliver us, 11 you also helping together in prayer for us, that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the gift granted to us through many.

We have just about convinced ourselves that if we ever have fears that it is a failure. We shouldn't live in a spirit of fear, but we should notice that even the great apostle had life situations pop up that can only be described as fear.

In the Psalms, David also cried out in despair of his situations. Some have looked down their nose at the words of the psalmist in a super-spirituality that just does not jive with how scary real life can be at times. Life can get fearsome - especially when you are the anointed of God and the enemy is nipping hard at your heels. There are times when if fears don't rise up in you, you may already be dead!

Let's get real. In the psalms I read cries of great despair, then a confession in the faithfulness of God in the next breath. Is this double-mindedness? I think it is just human. We are just humans on the path of eternal life. To be a genuine or authentic person of God, we can not discount either our spiritual destiny nor our humanity.

Take heart Israeli Body of Messiah. Our trust is not in ourselves or even our own faith, but our trust is in Him.

A word I share with Israel

2009-05-27T07:47:00.000-07:00

Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by your name;
You are Mine

Graphic by http://www.heartlight.org

When I was a little girl I was disappointed by a prayer that went unanswered by God. My relationship with Him over the decades to follow was tumultuous. So, when I was thirty, I discovered the God I had instinctively expected in my 12-year old heart. I found the real God, who is not faraway and alienated from us in our troubles. I was seeing the God that actually heals in answer to prayers of faith. I rejoiced to finally be on track of the real God, my real Father in Heaven.

I knew that there must have been a reason that He did not answer my prayer that caused me to become so disillusioned with God when I was just a little girl, so I threw myself into reading the Bible over and over. I read it like my life depended upon knowing it, and in fact, it does.

My favorite book of the Bible became Isaiah, because I could relate with the tumultuous relationship Israel had with God. Every promise I saw from God to Israel, rang in my own heart as also a word for me.

This is one of the verses that leapt off the pages of my Bible in those early days of finally - at long last - beginning to discover who God really is. A God who is faithful to His covenant with us, even when we have been unfaithful for a multitude of reasons. He looks on our weakness, and considers our frame.

But now, thus says the LORD, who created you, O Jacob,
And He who formed you, O Israel:
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by your name;
You are Mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
And through the rivers, they shall not overflow you.
When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned,
Nor shall the flame scorch you.
For I am the LORD your God,
The Holy One of Israel, your Savior (yasha - salvation - deliverer)

Prophetic Intercession

2009-05-19T08:33:00.000-07:00

Here is something that for years I have pondered and I don't know what I believe, really. What is Prophetic Intercession really?

Now, here is one thing that I have wrestled with: Many intercessors say they take on the pains of people with physical diseases they are in prophetic intercession for. I have always wondered if that was really from God, or whether in our openness to thinking it was 'prophetic intercession' we were actually opening a door for the enemy to mimic the symptoms upon the intercessor?

Now for me, I don't want any pain that I don't have to carry - certainly not any pain the enemy is 'letting me share' with those I pray for - even though I am willing to carry whatever pain God gives me the grace to carry in intercession. I am willing because when you know the pain or stress of the people you pray for from experience, I believe it gives you more compassion for where they stand.

Real pain is what I see the prophetic intercessors in scripture bearing for the sake of those they are interceding for with their lives and with their prayers. Peter wrote that when we suffer for our own faults that there is no glory for us to take it patiently, but if we suffer for righteousness' sake, then we are not to be "afraid of their terror, neither be troubled," but rather be "happy".

As Paul explained it, we not only know "the power of His resurrection", but also the "fellowship of His sufferings". The combination of these things, Paul said, are necessary in attaining the resurrection from the dead. Not one or the other, but both. That mindset is far from what I have mostly heard called "prophetic intercession" these days.

Recently during one of my daily scripture readings I jotted down a thought, that many Christian believers have a strong revelation these days of "the inheritance of the saints", but that the Israeli believers have a strong revelation of "the fellowship of His sufferings." They do what they sacrificially for the sake of sharing the gospel with their nation.

According to Paul both the power and the sufferings are what make us attain the resurrection of the dead. If is not an either/or choice, but they go hand in hand. As I see it, this is how as the Body of the Lord we are supposed to pour from vessel to vessel so we have everything we need, not just part of what we need.

This is one of the key reasons it is a mistake in the churches who are operating at a high level in the inheritance revelation to assume that the increasing salvation among the Jews is of no consequence to them. It is of great consequence because one will not get to the goal line without the other.

In scripture the prophets certainly underwent hardship to carry the messages they carried from the Lord - Jeremiah is a good example of one who was kept in a horrible cesspool until the national leaders were carried away into captivity. This guy really suffered for seeing what the rest of his nation did not see.

Another example is Daniel who went into exile and captivity with Israel, and from that place prayed in identification with the sins of his people - although he himself was innocent. He still loved his people enough to confess their sins before God seeking God's pardon on their behalf. Moses did the same thing. Every great and godly leader of Israel took that same position to stand between God and the people to intercede for God's mercy.

Even the apostle Paul - the example of a New Covenant apostle/prophet - carried out a distinctly prophetic act when he took the contributions gathered from all the churches he oversaw back to Jerusalem for the persecuted saints.

All along the trip back to Jerusalem the prophetic people were coming to Paul saying, 'Don't do this! They are going to lock you up - we've seen it!'

Paul answered them, 'Don't make me cry. I am bound in the Spirit to do this.'

He was saying, This is bigger than me, I'm not the first priority to consider, but this prophetic act has to be carried out. It was a prophetic act not just for the sake of the first century churches, but for the sake of the generation to come when God would begin to re-graft the natural branches (Jews) back into their own olive tree - right alongside all the wild branches (Non-Jewish Christians from the nations).

After Paul carried out his mission, returning to Jerusalem with the contributions from the churches for all the persecuted believers in Israel, he was indeed arrested. Then from Rome where he was taken to bear witness of the gospel - while standing trial - he explained the underlying understanding he had that caused him to continue forward past every prophetic warning that he would be arrested in Jerusalem.

It was simple. The church simply could not act as if the trials of the Body in Israel had nothing to do with them. If one member of the Body suffers, all suffer - whether they feel it or not; whether they are cognizant of it or not.

So Paul wrote in the letter to the Romans (9-11), spelling out what he knew by revelation God ultimately intended to do: removing the scales of unbelief from the eyes of the Jewish people so they might be able to receive their own Messiah in faith.

There is no record that the churches continued to do this thing that Paul paid such a high price to model for us. In fact, it is clear from church historical records that if they continued to materially support the believers in Israel it had completely stopped by 325 A.D.

Paul invested in the generation who would see what he had done prophetically, and would follow him as he had followed Christ - even to the Christian care for the Body of the Lord in Israel. We see them again in Israel in our generation, but we have yet to see what Paul modeled prophetically for us in the churches to do about the rock and hard place they stand in for the sake of the gospel.

I believe the prophets have assignments that bring them into conditions that I would term as prophetic intercession. I see it in scripture and therefore believe it is something that continues to happen today. It is not an extra-biblical manifestation, so all the debate over whether it is from God or from the devil does not even apply.

Mostly what I have seen in terms prophetic intercession is not something I see an example of in scripture, so I'm not sure about those manifestations. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. I am not chasing down anyone in a witch hunt to prove they are wrong, nor chasing them down to participate in it either.

I realize the scripture says that the Spirit makes intercession within us for us with groanings that cannot be uttered. That word groanings is stenadzo. It is also used 2 verses earlier and is descriptive of how we pray when we are in dire straits and don't even know how to put our prayers into words: "to sigh, murmur, pray inaudibly:—with grief, groan, grudge, sigh." Hannah prayed in groanings when her lips were moving and not a word came out of her mouth.

I have seen all sorts of things called prophetic intercession - and I don't want to make a judgment on that, except to say if that was prophetic
intercession, it did not resemble at all the prophetic intercession I see in the scriptures.

When Paul told the Galatians, "My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you," I seriously doubt he was talking about mimicking labor pains while praying. Rather, he was laboring in instruction and modeling the way they were to walk out their faith as the non-Jewish (Gentiles, which means nations outside of Israel) believers, or Christians as the unbelievers in Antioch took to calling them.

The Galatians were being enticed to go through the process of Gentiles being converted to Judaism and the apostle Paul - who was the apostle to the Gentiles - was laboring with them through re-instruction how that was not necessary. Paul wasn't assuming the birthing position in the prayer meeting, he was going over the same ground in teaching - instruction of the faith - as many times as it took for the Galatians to get it settled into their spirit.

Paul was saying that the important thing was, and the thing that he was sacrificing himself by interceding in their lives with his life - was for the Messiah to be formed in them. That is what he was teaching them and modeling to them.

(The "Messiah" which means the "Anointed" of God, is "Christ" in the English, from the word "Christos" in the Aramaic/Greek. This does not need to be an issue that distracts from the greater issue of "Christ in us, the hope of glory.)

He was saying - we have a greater concern than going through a process to convert to Judaism, which is only a shadow of the process of transformation we all have embarked on in Jesus being formed in us.

In the Old Covenant, the Spirit of God - the Anointed - would only come to rest on those holding the office of prophet, priest and king. These offices are all representative of the office of Jesus, God's Anointed, or Messiah....or Christ. Each of those words meaning the same thing: Anointed.

The regular people of Israel did not have the Anointed Spirit resting on them except for a few who were a foreshadowing of the anointing that would one day indwell all in the faith. This foreshadowing is recorded in the camp of Israel in the Exodus, when the Spirit rested on the 70 elders chosen to help Moses judge the people.

The 70 elders, of course, are representative of the 70 nations - it is a symbolic number to represent all the nations of the world and pointing to the time when the Holy Spirit would be given to all who followed in the faith of Yeshua-Jesus. Until Jesus died and rose again, the Holy Spirit did not indwell believers, but only came to rest on those in the offices that represented the Messiah Yeshua - Prophet, Priest & King.

The indwelling of the Spirit is better than a mere resting of the Spirit, on an office. Jesus had the Spirit without measure - He was indwelt by the Spirit without measure because the devil had nothing in Him. There was no darkness in Jesus as the Son of Man, so the Spirit had full access. As we are transformed to the likeness of Jesus, what is actually taking place is the areas of darkness in us which the devil has been owning, are being crucified and in that place the Spirit of God is taking ownership. So we are not seeking for the Spirit to "rest" on us, but to indwell us more fully - without measure, as the Spirit indwelt Jesus.

What is prophetic intercession at its highest level? Do we need to have symptoms or suffer the same stresses as though we are prophetically interceding for? Are prayer rooms filled with intercessors writhing in what appears to be birth pangs real, or missing the intended point?

These are questions that I have wrestled with for many years, and still do....especially during times of suffering.

Warfare as Netanyahu Faces Obama

2009-05-18T07:04:00.000-07:00

Notice an increase of warfare? The atmosphere is pretty intense?

Part of the warfare is because the Body is not properly connected together. By that, I mean the connection that should be in play between the followers of Jesus on both sides of the aisle - the Jewish believers and the Christians from the nations (Gentiles).

Don't Fear the People

2009-05-12T06:17:00.000-07:00

Seems fitting for the controversial ground we cover.

Blue Oyster Cult Undergoes a 'Faith Upgrade' thanks to the Christian parody group, ApologetiX. The video was made by a group of kids at a church camp.

A couple of months ago, Wellington Boone prophesied over me saying, "I see you speaking and people think you're mad at them. But that’s because God is angry. And I see you sometimes talking out of the heart of God and people will feel how God feels when you’re talking, and saying what God says. Don’t be afraid of their faces. In the name of the Lord." [transcript]

This is for all the prophets out there, and for the believers who are standing for the work of the Lord in Israel.

Whoso keeps the fig tree shall eat the fruit thereof

2009-05-04T07:40:00.000-07:00

Proverbs 27:18 is a clear promise of not only natural food but also spiritual food for those who "keep the fig tree." In scripture, the fig tree is symbolic of Israel.

I only have one fruit tree on my property and it is a fig tree that my father-in-law in Delaware gave me before he died a few years ago. My husband is Italian and I don't think there is anyone native to the Mediterranean Sea region who does not hold a special place in the heart for the fig tree.

My father-in-law certainly loved his fig trees. He had about 200 small fig trees on his normal-sized residential home in Wilmington. It was labor-intensive, but a labor of love to keep all those fig trees in Delaware where winter could mean snow on the ground from Thanksgiving to the end of May.

To winterize his trees, PopPop would dig some up, pot them and store them in his garage after all the leaves began to fall off. Some he would dig a trench beside, lay them down horizontally in the trench and then cover over with a mound of dirt. Then in the Spring he would upright them, replant the others and off again they would grow.

My father-in-law was one of the most meticulous gardeners you could ever meet. He poured out a lot of tender, loving care over his fruit trees. He told me not to ever use commercial fertilizers because it would be too much for the trees, but use manure only. He also carefully pruned the trees each season because, he told me, "The fruit only blooms on new wood." A tree might get taller and taller, but it was only the new wood each season that would bear fruit.

Of course the secondary reason he kept them pruned back was that he needed to keep the trees a manageable size. Unless he went to great lengths to winterize the trees they would not survive Delaware winters.

He would tell me of his boyhood memories in Italy of climbing into towering trees to get up to where the fruit of the fig tree had blossomed. There he would eat figs to his heart's content. In his late Seventies he was again eating fig trees to his heart's content - now only from many, much smaller trees. It was physically hard work for a man in his late Seventies, so as he entered his Eighties, my mother-in-law made him start giving away his fig trees to family, friends and neighbors. That's when I got the fig tree I now tend in Dallas.

Tending the Spiritual Fig Tree

Many Christians who don't believe that Israel holds any special role anymore in the plan of God among mankind often point to the scripture passages where Jesus cursed the fig tree. They believe this was the symbolic cursing of Israel forever.

One of the things that I believe they fail to grasp is that the cursing of the fig tree was a demonstration of "mountain moving" faith. They also miss a very important statement in one of the gospel accounts, Mark 11:13 "When He came to it, He found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs."

There is a season for the "fig tree" to bear fruit, as the apostle Paul later explained in Romans 9-11.

The cursing of the fig tree was not the symbolic cursing of Israel "forever" from bearing fruit. What would that say about the justice of the LORD? What Paul explains in Romans 11 certainly speaks of God's justice better than the explanation of so many in the Church that Israel was cursed forever by Jesus.

In Romans 11:1, Paul addresses this idea directly, "I say then, has God cast away His people? Certainly not!....God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew."

In verses 7-8 Paul begins to explain the situation to the Romans,
"What then? Israel has not obtained what it seeks; but the elect have obtained it, and the rest were blinded. Just as it is written:
“God has given them a spirit of stupor,
Eyes that they should not see
And ears that they should not hear,
To this very day.”

In verse 11, the apostle reveals that Israel's God-spoken blindness to the awaited for Messiah is all part of the plan, to open salvation to the nations (Gentiles).

In verses 19-20 Paul says to the Romans, "You will say then, 'Branches were broken off that I might be grafted in.' Well said. Because of unbelief they were broken off, and you stand by faith. Do not be haughty, but fear."

The fig tree that Jesus cursed was a demonstration to His disciples about faith. In Romans 11, the apostle Paul is telling the Gentile Christians that Israel was broken off because of unbelief.

Paul quotes Isaiah 29:10 and Deuteronomy 29:4 which both explicitly say: "Yet the LORD hath not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day."

Is this some kind of cruel joke God is playing on a people that He called out to follow Him as His "chosen people" as it seems some Christians believe? I don't think so, but rather believe that Paul explains that it is a mystery - the plan of God that has been hidden from understanding throughout the ages.

God answers that question Himself through the prophet Isaiah (45:19):
"I did not say to the seed of Jacob,
‘Seek Me in vain’;
I, the LORD, speak righteousness,
I declare things that are right."

The Mystery of the Plan of God

Paul tells us in Romans 11:25-26, "For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written..."

Blindness is the allotment that has befallen Israel, until the completion of the Gentiles is entered into.

In Job 41:15, we are told that Leviathan's scales are pride. It is the scales of pride that fell off of the apostle Paul's own eyes when Ananias laid hands on him to return sight to his blinded eyes.

The warning of Paul to the Romans is "Do not be haughty, but fear", or don't fall into pride about being grafted into - because it is this same kind of pride that blinds us to God's truth.

Most of this writing I have been speaking of the down side of these issues but there is an upside, which is the one I started with. He who keeps the fig tree shall eat the fruit thereof.

The Lord wants us to understand His plan, or He would not have given the apostle Paul the understanding of it to include in his writings, especially Romans 9-11 where he speaks most comprehensively about it. But there is also a timing involved for the fig tree to bear its fruit in season. That time is before us according to the answer Jesus gave His disciples in Matthew 24:3,

And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?"

Skipping to verses 32-33: Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors."

Remember, the fruit of the fig tree grows only on the new wood. Today there is not only tender leaves on the new wood of Israel's branches but there is first fruit growing, as well.

Those who tend the fig tree of Israel, watching over it, keeping it so that it bears much fruit in its season, are those who are interceding for the fruit already ripening on the fig tree and the fruit that will continue to form in this due season.

The scales of pride will keep us from seeing God's intentions for Israel to bear much fruit, but for those who gladly receive that God is going to do a mighty work of salvation among His people, Israel, those have the promise they will partake of that fruit.

Even as pride is the blindness that keeps us from entering into the powerful promises of God by faith, Jesus said in Matthew 13:11-15,

“Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says:

‘Hearing you will hear and shall not understand,
And seeing you will see and not perceive;
15 For the hearts of this people have grown dull.
Their ears Bare hard of hearing,
And their eyes they have closed,
Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears,
Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn,
So that I £should heal them.’

The fruit of tending the fig tree today is being given more understanding of the mysteries of the kingdom. With this rather lengthy introductory explanation, this is the purpose of this blog, to share the spiritual fruit of one who tends the fig tree.