Message – Christians and the battle for the land of Israel

On May 21, 2015, I was invited to speak on this topic at one of the ‘Ministry Tracks’ at the Empower 21 Congress in the Pais Arena here in Jerusalem. The message is reproduced here, illustrated with the PowerPoint slides I had prepared.

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Good afternoon.

I want to read three passages from the prophets of the Lord, reading as one:

Behold, I will gather them out of all countries where I have driven them in My anger, in My fury, and in great wrath; I will bring them back to this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely. They shall be My people, and I will be their God; then I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear Me forever, for the good of them and their children after them. And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from doing them good; but I will put My fear in their hearts so that they will not depart from Me. Yes, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will assuredly plant them in this land, with all My heart and with all My soul.’

Sing, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O Israel! Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away your judgments; He has cast out your enemy. The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall see disaster no more. In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: “Do not fear; Zion, let not your hands be weak. The Lord your God in your midst, the Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.”

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 salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns!” Your watchmen shall lift up their voices, with their voices they shall sing together; for they shall see eye to eye when the Lord brings back Zion. Break forth into joy, sing together, you waste places of Jerusalem! For the Lord has comforted His people, He has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord has made bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God. (Jeremiah 32:37-41; Zephaniah 3:14-17; Isaiah 52:7-10)

 

The Lord God who spoke these words is unchanging. And His Word stands forever.

Brothers and sisters: I’m not sure if you’ve come from all the ends of the earth – this relatively small group that is in this room – but I think you’ve come from probably every corner. You’ve come here, and you are here – in Jerusalem the city of our great King.

I wonder if you know why you are in Jerusalem, Israel, and why this event isn’t happening in Montreal in Canada, or in Melbourne, Australia, or in Cape Town, South Africa?

I wonder if you know that God has invited you to this place at this time; that He has brought you here because He has something wonderful to show you, something that He is very, very excited about? Something that fills His heart – as we just read – with joy?

God is doing everything to get our attention on this land. Not a day goes by when something from Israel is not reported and recorded and sent around the world.

But what is He doing here? What is He really doing? Why has He brought you here and what does He want to show you?

This has been the burden I have carried since I was first asked to speak to you today. And this is what I am going to try and share from my heart and, I pray, from His – in the short time we have together.

I believe that what God has brought you here to show you is that He is building an ark for His people.

God is gathering His ancient people, the Jews, back to this land to keep them safe and secure. Two thousand years ago He wanted to gather them under His wings, but He wasn’t able to. Now, however, they are being brought back to be sheltered under the wings of the LORD God of Israel.

He is bringing them back – as we just read, and can read from an abundance of Scriptures – to do them good.

And do you know what we have to own, Christian brothers and sisters? It is this: that what He is doing in this land is not something that He is doing with another people, and to another people, and concerning the future of another people.

What He is doing in this land has to do with my future and with your future – with the future destiny of both Israel and the Church. Because in the end there is only one people, there is only one flock, and there is only one Shepherd.

And so what He is doing here God wants us to know. He wants us to know about it and He wants our involvement in it. It is the most important thing on His mind and on His heart at this time. I believe the Bible emphatically makes this clear, and what we see happening around us underscores it.

He is preparing an Ark to keep this nation safe.

But there is a land weapon that is being formed against this Ark. A weapon that is being manufactured by the international community that threatens the safety and the existence of the nation that God is gathering together.

We need to know – I believe – that God is bound, in unbreakable covenant, with the people of Israel and with the land of Israel. All three are together in symbiotic relationship – God, His People, and His Land.

The People of Israel is the nation that God chose to birth His Messiah through; this is the nation that He chose to be keepers of the oracles of God, and to share them with the world. It is a nation that has a special and enduring purpose in the eyes of God.

The Land of Israel – the city of Jerusalem – the Mountain of the Lord in the heart of this city, Mount Moriah, the Temple Mountain – these are three specific points of geography for God’s Kingdom purposes.

It is in this land, in this city, and on this mountain that the Kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven, as we have been led and taught by Him to pray.

The Land is a critical component.

Satan knows it. The whole word knows it. But for most of us in the Church, it’s not on our radar screen. It’s just land. It’s simply real estate. It’s not really that important.

This is part of the legacy that we carry from our Gentile, Greek heritage. When the Church was birthed – a Jewish Church with a Jewish Messiah, Jewish disciples, a Jewish book – it was all Jewish. And for the Jew, there is no distinction between the sacred and the secular, between what happens in the spiritual realm and what happens in the secular. It is all part of life.

But way back in the early part of our ‘Christian era,’ the roots of our faith were cut off; not just the Jewish roots, with which so many Christians are now trying to reconnect, but also our connection with the physical nation and the physical land of Israel. These roots were severed, and Israel became no longer relevant, no longer important to us. We had the ‘New Jerusalem.’ So who needed the earthly one? Mount Zion became a spiritual, heavenly place. And as for the temple, who needs a temple?

How wrong, how deceived, we have been. For reasons I think He alone knows, the Lord allowed this deception to stand. But He has promised to remove blindness from all of our eyes, from Jew and from Gentile, and to do so on the physical site He calls His holy hill.

Until now, though, for most of us, Israel isn’t important. And even the relatively few who do still see Israel as being relevant see her simply as a part of the ‘prophetic puzzle’ – and far from of central significance to us in the Church.

If Israel is not of vital significance to you – ask yourself, what does the devil know that you don’t know? Why is he expending so many of his resources, tying up all of the world’s governments, occupying nation after nation for year after year with the question of the land of Israel in a way that speaks to endangering this nation that he has for so long been trying to destroy? Why is he doing all of this, with so much effort and emphasis, if not for the fact that the erosion of the security, and the destruction of the very lives of those who are being brought back to this land, is really his unchanged goal and aim and desire?

Why is Israel Satan’s focal point internationally and politically? And why are Israel and Jerusalem his final targets prophetically?

God says in His Word that for a thousand generations – by His Word, by oath and by statute – the people of Israel and the land of Israel are bound together in Covenant with Him.

Let us not forget, brothers and sisters, that the nation of Israel is God’s firstborn son, the dearly beloved of His soul. Israel is His chosen people, they are the sheep of His pasture, His special treasure.

Israel is the apple of His eye. This means that when God looks at the world, Israel – people and land – is at the very centre of His vision.

He is our God. Do we share His vision?

These terms of endearment that God uses for Israel have never changed. They remain, because Israel as a nation remains a nation before God as long as the sun and moon hang in the sky. They never lost that purpose; they never lost that calling.

And the Land of Israel? It is centre stage for the plan of redemption of God. Take your Bible, brothers and sisters. You start with Genesis and you have 11 chapters – from Genesis 1 to Genesis 11 – that are not about Israel. The rest of the Book, the rest of the Bible, deals with this nation and with this land. The land – in its Biblical borders, the entire ancient land of Canaan – was given, exclusively and forever, in unbreakable covenant, to Abraham, Isaac and Israel.

The land was given forever. God has not forgotten who owns it. He remembers.

God has said that this land may not be sold, and may not be given away. The nations of the world – your nation and my nation – try to take part of this land, or divide it, at their peril.

Since 1882, for more than 130 years, God has been bringing the people of Israel and the land of Israel together.

And He has been bringing them together to do them good.

We just read about it. We read about how excited He is about this restoration. What He is doing is a source of great joy to the Lord. He is bringing the people of Israel home for blessing.

Once in their land, He has promised that He will cleanse them of all their iniquity.

Please note very carefully:

From Moses to Malachi, no destruction is foretold for the Jewish people between the times when they are physically restored to their land and spiritually restored to their God. There is none; not in any of the prophecies about the return to their land at this time in the history of the Jewish people does God follow their physical restoration with a large-scale destruction before their spiritual rebirth.

There are those who repeatedly point to one verse and insist that it refers to a destruction of two-thirds of the Jews that is still to happen and that it will happen after their return to their land. One verse, one passage, and they ignore the fact that that prophecy has already become history, that it has already happened.

They ignore the fact that the people of Israel have experienced such annihilation, not once, but twice – beginning 2000 years ago with the destruction by Rome of two-thirds of Judea’s Jews, and ending just the other day with the Nazi’s extermination of two-thirds of the Jews of Europe.

But go to the list of Scriptures on this slide and read them all. Notice, please, God’s reiterated promise to bring His people back and to preserve them in this land, to keep them safe in this land, that they do not need to fear in this land and that He will watch over and keep them as a Shepherd keeps his sheep – in this land.

God is doing this – first and foremost – for the sake of His name. As much as He loves Israel and as much as He loves the world, He is doing this for the sake of His name. For, as the Psalmist asks, why should the nations say concerning this nation, where, now, is their God?

God has given His Word who this land belongs to. He has promised to return this nation to its own land and He has repeatedly reassured them that they will not need to fear after they have been brought back.

This is what we need to be telling them!!

Can He be trusted? His name and His reputation are on the line.

I am going to say something right now, and I want to ask you to put this one in your heart and pray about this: brothers and sisters, the time of trouble for Jacob is nearly done.

The time of Jacob’s trouble is nearly done.

The time of trouble for Jacob began when the Shepherd was struck and the sheep were scattered. And after He left this earth, hundreds of thousands of the Jews would be wiped out in revolts put down by Rome, and the rest would wander the world homeless, loveless, hated and persecuted, for 2000 long years.

For 2000 years, the Jewish people have known very little BUT trouble. For 2000 years the enemy of us all, the enemy of God, sought to wipe them out, sought to destroy them.

He came horribly, terribly close to achieving his goal.

But the termination of that ‘time of Jacob’s trouble’ is indicated by the gathering by the same Shepherd of the remnant of His flock, and the bringing of them back to this land where, He has promised them, He will “keep them as a shepherd keeps his sheep.”

Jacob’s trouble ends with the return of the Jews to their land. Their return follows their trouble. We have arrived to what God calls “the set time to favour Zion.” And the light of His countenance is rising to shine over this land and over this nation once again. Not in isolation from what He is doing in and among the Gentile nations; not as something that we are disconnected from as the Body of Messiah; something that we are supposed to be plugged right into for – as the Light rises to shine over Zion, if we are not plugged into that Power Source, the light will not shine upon us.

We have to flow with God and with His purposes for this nation.

The times of the Gentiles are likewise nearly fulfilled. There is an equation between them and the time of Jacob’s trouble. Jesus said the times of the Gentiles would last from the time of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, until Jerusalem (including the Mountain of the Lord) will no longer be trodden down by Gentiles.

Now in 1948, and in 1967, millions of Christians around the world celebrated as we saw God fulfilling His Word, as we saw the Jews return to their borders, as we saw Israel resurrected from the dead nationally in a very real sense. And when they returned to Judea and Samaria in 1967 with the Six Day War, and back to Jerusalem, we rejoiced and we marvelled and we rejoiced some more. The Jews were home to stay and God – He was doing it; He had done it!

We knew that God had brought them back. We believed that He had given them back their land. This work of the Lord’s is not separated out from us. He wants us to be involved with what He is doing here. And not as an aside.

For 130 years God has been bringing back together the bones – the bleached and dried and scattered and hopeless bones of Israel. He has put the bones together, bone to bone. He has covered them with flesh and with sinews, and with skin. The nation of Israel is physically reconstituted in their land once more. It has been an event unprecedented in the annals of man’s history. But now we are waiting.

A stern word: if we oppose, as Christians, what God is doing with Israel, we will find ourselves fighting against our own God.

Consider this carefully, because day in and day out our minds are being poisoned against Israel. The international media is demonising this nation, delegitimising this nation and preparing the world for the moment when it will not care if Israel is removed.

Adolf Hitler did not begin gassing Jews when he became chancellor in 1933. He spent his first eight years in office preparing Germany for war and poisoning the minds of the German people against the Jews. He portrayed them as rats, as vermin, as untermensch, so that when the gas chambers and the ovens were ready nobody protested, because the Jews were a plague, and the final solution – as Hitler called it – was something for all right thinking people to welcome.

In a very similar way, for 25 years, I have watched the international press – since Madrid, and the first international Middle East Peace Conference which I covered for the International Christian Embassy, up until today – demonising Israel and publishing blood libels against this nation, portraying Israel as a land robber, as a serial abuser of human rights, a war criminal – poisoning the world against her.

And the Church is being seduced along with everyone else.

God has given us a calling. He has called us to comfort His people that are hated around the world. He has called us to encourage them – I just read it – to see that it is their God who is returning them to this land. And He has called us to reassure them that they can trust Him to preserve them here.

He wants us to help and He has wanted us to help prepare the way for them to come home. He has wanted us to help bring them home and we have done so. He wants us to help keep them safely in their home. He wants us to co-labour with Him as watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem, guarding and defending Israel. And He wants us to take hold of Israel and commit to “go with her” like Ruth – to make her people our people (her God is already ours) and letting nothing separate us from this nation.

He wants us to salt our nations – having called us to be the salt of the earth. And I believe He wants us to pray, and to call on our governments to be moral in their policies concerning Israel, lest they curse this nation and bring a curse on ours.

When the Jews were still scattered and politically powerless, God spoke to Christians who went to His Word and saw that God wanted and intended to return the Jews to this land – and Christians, long before there was a political Zionism or a Jewish Zionism, Christians went ahead of the Jews – men and women of faith, to prepare the way for the Jewish people to come home.

There is a long list of those we call Christian Zionists. The Wesley brothers, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Robert Murray M’Shayne, William Hechler, Arthur Balfour, Orde Wingate – they were among the Christians who were involved, not only by being spiritual and by preaching, but also physically and even being politically active to prepare the way for the Jewish people to come home.

Whereas Jewish Zionism was mostly a pragmatic response to persecution, Christian Zionism was faith-driven in going ahead of the Jews. It is for that reason that the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, has gone on record more than once to say, “I don’t believe that the Jewish state and modern Zionism would have been possible without Christian Zionism…”

Christian Zionists were still championing Jewish land rights into the 1990s, taking an outspoken stand, based on Scripture, not politics, against the growing global pressure on Israel to surrender its land for promises of peace. But then, in 2005, right here in Jerusalem, citing an aversion to involvement in ‘politics,’ preaching a ‘politically correct’ new theology, or embracing a fatalistic expectancy that the Lord will sort things out, Christian Zionists have largely abandoned this central field of battle to the enemy, leaving Israel alone against the world.

For 25 years, the Gentile nations have been forming a weapon against Israel, a weapon whose purpose is to destroy the ark that God is preparing for this nation. This weapon is called “Palestine.” It poses as much of a threat to Israel as does Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear bomb. Most of the United Nations member states have unilaterally recognised Palestine and seek to impose on Israel this non-entity whose self-proclaimed purpose is the destruction of the Jewish state.

Right now, today, in Jerusalem, the Europeans’ foreign policy chief, Frederica Mogherini, and Norway’s foreign minister, are speaking to the prime minister of Israel. Yesterday, France messaged Jerusalem to warn Israel that within two years, if a State of Palestine is not in play, the French government will unilaterally and officially recognise that state.

Multitudes of Christians are being seduced by cries of “peace peace” to support the establishment of this Arab state on Israel’s God-given land.

But the Lord is again raising up Christian Zionist voices in the nations to go before Israel in this battle for the land.

Late last year, spurred by a vision of God offering Australia a crown of service to lead in blessing Israel, believers in the Land Down Under united in an initiative to publicly take a Biblical stand – not a political one – and from that position keep their country from joining efforts to impose a two state solution on Israel. Prayers directed towards the United Nations Security Council, that a PLO resolution to see Israel evicted from its biblical heartland before 2017 would be tabled and voted down, were answered on the last day of that year – the final day of Australia’s temporary membership on the Council.

Word of this initiative has been conveyed to New Zealand and through countries in Europe – including the Netherlands, Germany, Northern Ireland, Ireland and Wales. Christians in these countries have been challenged to do the same thing, to stand on God’s Word and proclaim publicly from that Word for their nations to hear – so salting their nations – that God is bringing the Jewish people back to keep them in this land, and that the division of this land in a so-called two state solution is an immoral and anti-God effort by their governments.

Brothers and sisters, when the former rain fell at Pentecost, the gospel of the Kingdom went out from Zion to the nations. And disciples marvelled that Gentiles had also been given access to that Kingdom.

Now it is God’s time to favour Zion.

He is preparing to return to this land, the land of Israel – not Palestine – and to Jerusalem, the capital of Israel and not of Palestine – with great zeal and great fervour. As He continues to put these bones together, as He continues to reconstitute the physical nation of Israel, He has brought Spirit-filled believers from the four corners of the earth to breathe God’s words of life and hope into a reconstituted physical Israel that faces danger on every side. At the Feast of Tabernacles every year, Christians gather here in Jerusalem and pray for the outpouring of the former and the latter rain on this nation as He has promised to do.

We need to plug into the heart of God to truly experience ‘Pentecost.’ Israel’s physical, and then spiritual, restoration are central to His purposes today, and they are prerequisite to His return.

Is Israel front and centre to us?

Never again?

Ladies and gentlemen – and I am closing now – every year in Israel there is a day to remember the Holocaust. The reality is that every day in this land the people of Israel remember the Holocaust. And they cling to the words they hear coming as a pledge and a promise from our nations: never again. Never again, we declare, will we ever allow such a thing to happen. And Christians around the world have repented for being silent during the Holocaust that swept away two-thirds of Europe’s Jews.

We say ‘never again,’ and yet most of us are being dead quiet when a massive effort is underway – wretchedly led by the so-called Judeo-Christian nations – to prepare a weapon whose purpose is to annihilate this nation – to finish Hitler’s work.

Tragically, if Israel were removed from the map of the Middle East tomorrow, the faith of most Christians would not be affected. That’s not going to happen, because God has committed Himself to preserve this nation, and He has brought her back to keep her here.

But He wants us on board with what He is doing. He wants us to stand, lock, stock and barrel, with Israel.

I pray that He would speak to your hearts in a way that will keep you awake at night, that will keep you on your knees before Him, asking Him to give you the same passion and the same zeal that He has for this nation and for His people, and committing to actively stand with Israel, and with God’s purposes for Israel, and with God’s return of the land to His people in Israel, no matter who comes against them.

God has categorically stated, “I will remember the land.”

Surely He purposes that we remember it too?