An Apocalyptic Burden

I'm learning that we're being called for, being picked up early, and this might be the last opportunity to express the kind of burden that I carry. I carry a strange burden, and it makes me strange. It's an apocalyptic burden. It's a burden of impending judgment and doom for Israel, the time of Jacob's trouble for world jewelry, the near annihilation of the Jews that are presently in the world, the flight out of nations where they are presently established, to some degree of security and prosperity. How would you maintain a normal disposition if you had some sense of this impending disaster and look upon a church that is impervious or ignorant of this imminent devastation? That's my point. I'm not saying that to appeal to your sympathy, but prophetic men were on madness. Of course, they had a glimpse of things that are future, but they see them with a certain kind of cogency and immediacy as if they were about to happen indeed. When it does come, it will come with such suddenness as to really not only devastate those upon whom it comes, but those in the world who are sympathetic and related to Israel and have hoped in the establishment of her nation. Paul speaks about the last days falling away of the church, a great apostasy, and I suspect that not the least reason for it would be a massive disappointment that God will have allowed the great experiment of Israel to pathetically fail. And so where is God to allow a second time in the 20th century a massive devastation of world Jewry and the failure of their hopeful state that would have been their long-hoped-for place of security in the world? And what about the scriptures that seem to have promised it? Wasn't this the state that was born in 1948? And how could the Lord allow it to come to a tragic end and the Jews there be bestowed in flight from devastation or in actual captivity and brought again into the nations? It's for that reason that I believe the Lord gave us the impetus to go to Israel 40 years ago and establish a conference in Jerusalem, a city where I was saved 35 years ago and where I'm well-known by most of the believers there and have been welcomed every previous time because they used to say that when Art comes, he brings the word of the Lord with him. Now Art is no longer welcome because he brings the foreboding sense of an imminent disaster which men don't want to contemplate. What is it about us that flees from this unwilling to consider devastation and judgment? It's kind of flight from reality and so I don't want to give you the whole history of it, but if you are on Internet and you want to see my reply to my detractors and those who find my views offensive and even send me a letter of opposition signed by 13 of the most prominent messianic and other leaders of ministries in Israel whom I've known for many years describing me as a false prophet or a man in error and doing serious damage to the body of Christ in Israel and being an angry enemy, my reply to those statements is to be found on our website www.bentisrael.org and up comes something called the burning bush very significantly titled because the bush represents the burning bush but fire is almost always a verbal statement of judgment and there's a bush that's burning that we have no disposition to examine and when Moses was willing to turn aside to see and look into that bush, not as curiosity but to understand why the bush burning was not consumed it was at that point that God called him to be Israel's deliverer and there'll be a corollary of something of that same kind for the church of the last days willing to look into the burning bush of judgment because God is in the midst of that bush and there's a revelation of God and a call of God that is only to be found in that radical place but the rabbis rightly say why it is that God called Moses when he saw that he turned aside to see implying that there's a real issue of human volition and choice that we need not look into it we can circumvent them and go around because we instinctively sense that there's something here that's foreboding it's not safe to look into a subject of that kind it might not only damage, it might devastate all of our familiar categories and require a whole revision of how we understand the faith how we understand God how we understand the church how we understand Israel the issue of Israel is the issue of God the issue of Israel is the issue of the faith and to misapprehend Israel to see Israel humanly or sentimentally is to miss not only God's profound statement that is in the restoration of Israel but to miss God to sentimentalize Israel is to sentimentalize God to reject upon Israel a happy ending is to bring something of the same kind of subjective imagining that we employ for ourselves we ourselves shrink from catastrophe we shrink from apocalyptic things from judgment we also want a happy ending and we project upon Israel the same kind of desire that we have for ourselves our view of Israel in fact our view of God our view of theology is so much the projection of what is basically the disposition of our own heart and desire for ourselves there are few that are ruthless toward themselves that can receive the perspective of God that is painful in its first consideration that what's ultimate end is glory so do you know why it is that we miss the issue of Israel? because of intent only on Israel's success which humanly speaking is to be desired but from the point of view of apostolic consideration there's a much greater purpose of God for Israel it's not the establishment of a state however long desired and a place of security for people who have had their entire history in exile that the issue of Israel is not the issue of success but the issue of God's glory that's why Paul ends his remarkable statement in Romans chapters 9-11 that I commend to you because it's remarkable how much the church has missed it and that every segment of the church that celebrates itself as the Israel of God and speaks of the kingdom of God now necessarily omits Paul's profound statements in Romans 9-11 particularly the 11th chapter that makes clear there is no kingdom till Israel's restoration that Israel's being brought back from the dead is life for all nations but there is a death that precedes that life the issue of Israel is the issue of resurrection and the issue of resurrection is the issue of glory so I can only gasp and spurt and choke out the things that God has put into my heart and understanding and leave you in whatever condition that that word will bring you because I can never bring this systematically this is not a matter of lining up prophetic scriptures and bringing a logical statement this is a prophetic profusion this is something that has to come out of the course you can understand why Jeremiah complained to God that he was even born he didn't want to bear the anguish of his own message because he saw the impending judgment and he saw how upward hearted and unwilling the nation was to hear his statement so I'm in something of the same pickle well, you know what the remarkable thing is? that there is such a profusion of scripture that speaks of an end time devastation both for Israel and world through it that you wonder how anyone could miss it my problem is knowing where to select it's not to find a scripture or two that buttresses my view so Lord, precious God on high this, as you know, and I know is important tonight because to be adjusted to your view and your seeing is not only to be more aligned with you with regard to Israel but with regard to God himself because it brings in necessarily the issue of God in judgment and if he will not spare his own people of Israel twice in the same century how then will he spare us? and if judgment begins first with the people of God how long then will it be before it falls upon the nations? and so this is really remarkably important for our whole perception of reality itself and those things that are imminent and soon to take place in the United States it's not just a matter for our curiosity or understanding that I tried to share with brothers over the lunch table today the issue of Israel's survival of a remnant that shall return to Zion with everlasting joy upon their heads and mourning and sighing fleeing away is the issue of their being rescued out of this last days devastation by a church that is in the earth and that extends mercy that they might obtain mercy and it will not be a mercy that's cheap mercy is never cheap it will not be a mercy that's deserved because by definition mercy is never deserved it's given to the undeserving and Israel is an undeserving nation it's not because of perversity that God is going to save a remnant and restore that remnant to Zion and give it an honored place of preeminence among all nations and make it central and pivotal to all nations but it's because God has elected it's because God has chosen because He will have mercy upon whom He will have mercy because Israel is a perfect counterpoint and an opportunity for God to demonstrate to the nations what His essential nature is which is to say that He will have mercy upon whom He will have mercy all the more God because the nation itself is unmerciful the same God who condemns Israel for blaspheming my name and all nations where I have driven you is the same God who will rescue Israel from all nations to which they will yet be driven and driven through and South Africa is certainly no exception I tremble for the 80,000, 90,000 plus Jews in this nation when the bomb falls out and the suddenness with which a great anti-Semitic wave of hatred and terror falls upon Jews worldwide it will be precipitated by events in Israel themselves of which Jesus spoke in Matthew 24 and Luke 21 the other discourse when He was asked by His disciples what are the signs of the end of the age of your coming He talked about the persecution of the church but He also spoke about a horrendous event erupting in Jerusalem itself that they should pray that it should not take place on the Sabbath and that they should flee to the mountains of Judah that some kind of horrendous travesty will take place in the temple there are two interpretations one of an anti-Christ figure demanding worship who had negotiated a treaty for Israel that was brought in false peace and has abruptly ended after three and a half years by the coming of this negotiated demand of worship at which point Israel balks and it releases a vitriolic hatred against them by which a great devastation falls upon Jerusalem and Israel or it can be an invading army that is the abomination of desolation whatever it is something has got to commence in Israel and in Jerusalem but it's not confined there it's for that reason that it was a necessity for the establishment of a state because the scenario requires events to take place in Israel that precipitate this time of Jacob's trouble of which Jesus says in this discourse if that time were not cut short no flesh would survive but for the elect's sake that time will be cut short and that this affliction that is coming will eclipse all previous devastations known to world Jewry and if therefore that is future that means that the devastation must eclipse the Nazi holocaust that took six million Jewish lives and I believe that that time is future and part of my controversy with my brothers in Israel who think that because they're in the land and have a greater proximity to events there that somehow that provides them with a key of interpretation that is only exclusive to those who are in the land the issue of understanding the prophetic scriptures is not physical proximity in the land but spiritual proximity to the God who gave those scriptures and he gives that privilege to men who have a prophetic call and in fact the issue of who are the true prophets of God may well be what kind of view they are presenting to us either of a peace-peace when there is no peace and preaching a kind of false comfort that Israel has already experienced this time of Jacob's trouble and was during the Nazi holocaust even though a child can see that what Jesus is describing must have its inception in Jerusalem and the holocaust had its inception in Europe and in Germany so if the time of Jacob's trouble is future and will uproot Jews in all nations and will eclipse the Nazi holocaust and it is triggered by a devastation that comes first to Israel and the stage now is presently being set in fact a woman asked me at Ladies' Night when do you think these events will take place how long do we have? I said in terms of Israel's readiness to be devastated it could take place tomorrow I think the Lord has his hand of restraint upon the enemies of Israel who are vehemently bent upon Israel's destruction the only thing I think that restrains is that the church is not ready because Israel is not a factor in its own restoration it will be brought to a place of inertness of devastation of any capacity in itself to affect its own restoration and return if you know Jews and you know Jewish history you would understand why that is a necessity God is not wanting to show forth the dexterity of Israel and Jewish expertise or prowess to be hit squad at the cold and heavy events His object through Israel is to bless all the families of the earth and not to impress them the issue is not Jewish ability the issue is the mercy of God that will bring a nation into judgment unto death and then restore it by the same power that raised Jesus and raises us that they might be a millennial and everlasting tribute to God and bring the blessedness that Jews in their natural condition are incapable of bringing that's why, which other eternity but life from the dead there's a death that must precede that life and we're going to see if I'm correct in my expectation the first resurrection of a nation we have seen individual a resurrection of Jesus which is the prototype and the same power by which that nation also will be raised and we have supposedly experienced that in our own baptism in fact if we haven't and we have only made water baptism a kind of religious requirement and an ordinance of obedience and have not seen it, understood it and received it as a death to our own humanity and a resurrection to newness of life we ourselves will be incapacitated to give to Israel what we must the church is the key to Israel's redemption God has elected and appointed that because that depends on His glory He's taken that entity that is most excuse my language inimical, opposed and enmity with Jews the history of the church with Jews is a shock and a horror and yet God is going to take that agency and make that the instrument of God's redemption for Israel but a church of what kind? not a church which just sympathetically disposed of Israel and goes to plant a tree or runs to a feast of tabernacle celebration but a church that is itself in the resurrection mode and whose speaking is in resurrection power and resurrection authority because when Israel will finally come to a place that God has long been awaiting as is described in Ezekiel 37 we are cut off we are without hope we are as dry bones when Israel will acknowledge its absolute impotence when the power of the people will be shattered as it says in Daniel then God moves to raise a nation that is incapable of raising itself because Israel represents man Israel is the statement of man's human self-sufficiency human expertise, human ability to save itself the whole history of the state of Israel is itself a testimony of the remarkable ability to take and resuscitate the death of critical language to make it a modern day language to become itself a high tech state to be a formidable military presence to have atomic arsenal to be the great Hong Kong of the Middle East and not want to be a chosen people for the redemptive theocratic purposes of God so in terms of showing for human ability Israel can say look my no hands but that does not glorify God it just exhausts a nation humanly God is wanting to Israel is God's witness nation to the nations will not understand the subject of Israel except in the context of nations they are the first and the foremost of nations now they are the tail but they will one day as a restored lemon leave their head and as nations will not go up to that Israel and acknowledge that Israel's God and learn the ways of the God of Jacob but by going up to the house of God in the city of Jerusalem God promises to Zechariah there is something stubborn in the nations that is gentilic, arian proud that does not want to submit to God's chosenness the issue of God's choosing Israel is to be a stumbling stone in Zion for nations that will afford themselves more preeminent and more likely and candidate to be central to God's purposes than this despicable people who have blasphemed his name having no distinction among themselves and are apostating and away from the purposes of God and that are stubborn and stiff-necked people throughout their entire history they were appointed and elected for that how else shall God's mercy be made manifest and demonstrated except for a people of that kind but they have to be absolutely reduced to such an inept ineptness that they are incapable of affecting anything of their own restoration or return from the places to which they are soon to be driven by the devastation of war and judgment that God is going to pronounce upon the nation and Jacob everywhere it's the time of Jacob's trouble, wherever Jacob is and God says in Amos chapter 9 I will sift you because of this information I will bring you into judgment but I will not altogether annihilate you but I will sift you through the nations that not so much as one kernel shall fall to the ground the sifting through the nations is God's last profound revelation of himself both in judgment and in mercy that has not yet happened but it will soon happen and that's why when I'm in Odessa in the Ukraine in an unprepared way I can say to the Pentecostal church that prides itself in helping Ukrainian Jews to go to Israel out of this black seaport of Odessa oh you think you've done God's service? are you exalting yourself for having done good? your real test is yet to come, not to send Ukrainian Jews to Israel but to receive them back in fright and terror and panic, when the hellish devastation shall suddenly break upon their heads. Let's see what you'll do then in the history of your anti-Semitism where the people are going to come back in an unkept state, disordered utterly devastated and in fright. The issue of the nations is the issue of their response to Israel in that most despicable broken condition in which God will allow them to pass very much resonating the road to Calvary that Jesus himself walked. So I'm reading Isaiah 53 in a new way. I love that text and you know that there's been a long controversy between Jewish commentators and the Christian Christians of course rightly see Isaiah 53 as the most profound messianic text describing a suffering servant who is none other than the Lord himself who takes the sins and the transgressions of his people upon himself. Everybody hear me fine? They claim that Isaiah 53 speaks of the nation itself that it is a suffering servant and suffering for Gentiles and for nations and bringing some kind of resentive value through their suffering to the nations. Well, there's more to that than we should be quick to dismiss. Not so much of Israel's past in the nations but Israel's future being passed through the nations in a broken and grotesquely distorted state that the time of Jacob's troubles will bring upon her. Look at some of the scriptures that precede Isaiah 53 and they're full of references to physical violence and devastation. In Isaiah 49 verse 8 thus says the Lord, a kind of favor I have answered you on a day of salvation I have helped you, I have kept you and given you to a portion that desolate heritage saying to the prisoners come out and to those from darkness show thyself. For he who has pity on them will leave them and will turn all my mountains into a road and my highway shall be raised up so that God is already speaking of desolation of ruin, of prisoners captive, the word captive and captivity is just proliterated for all of these prophetic scriptures because he brings them up out of dungeons he brings them up out of hapless situations where no man himself can help save them. God is going to exhibit himself supernaturally to a secular and rationalistic people who even when they are orthodox have not the faith to believe in the supernatural power of God. And that power has got to be demonstrated because all of these prophetic statements end with a revelation of God as a deliverer in supernatural power so that Israel says he says by this you will know that I am the Lord who has spoken and performed this and you will know in that day that I am the Lord. Well evidently that day has not yet come for Israel does not yet know the Lord who can deliver by supernatural power and raise them up out of their own abject death the moment that they acknowledge we are cut off, we are without hope we are destroyed bones. We say well that sounds very much like a holocaust in the Nazi time. Well it does have reminiscence of dry bones but where did you hear the nation make a statement of that kind to acknowledge their destitution their impoverishment, their inability to lift themselves up from that statement. Instead we hear another kind of slogan that is current to this day, not that we are cut off but never again if you go to Dachau today in six foot high letters before the museum of the holocaust it is the statement never again. I was just in Treblinka in Poland and there in front of the granite monuments of all the nations for which Jews came that expired on that ground are the words never again in English French, German, Russian, Yiddish never again is a statement of Israel's defiant self confidence that though they may have been victims of the Nazi time coming out of a ghetto existence and Talmudic helplessness that is the last time that nations will do them in. The statement never again is not a statement of God being their strength their power and their defense it's a statement of their own prowess and their own ability. Can a nation with that mindset be a blessing to all the nations? The very phrase never again invites devastation and indeed it will come. And I believe that this statement in Ezekiel chapter 37 verse 11 when they themselves say we are cut off we are without hope we are as dry bones God will affect the restoration. He's waiting for that acknowledgement but it's not an acknowledgement that it's going to come abstractly or as a speculation it comes out of the grit and the reality of a very real devastation and death that leaves them as good as dead and without hope. What's the word of Israel's what's the name of Israel's national anthem? HaTikvah which means the hope only it's not a hope in God. Israel itself, the state has become a Jew's final idolatry it's hope and it's salvation and it's confidence is in itself. Well maybe other nations might be like and we do indulge in exactly that kind of self salvation but this elect people cannot be allowed to not understand the severity of which God speaks in Romans 11 He says, consider and behold the goodness and severity of God. Who of us has done that? If you'll not see the severity of God in God's dealing with Israel you'll not understand God. If he does not withhold severity from Israel what then about nations? God is judged, is most profoundly depicted in Scripture in every chastisement that Israel has borne all through her history and God says and yet they have not laid it apart. I have brought them into the fire and they have not laid it apart. I've got a book up there that's available for as many tonight who are interested called the Holocaust. Where was God? An appeal to Jewish consideration. If the Holocaust did not bring world Jewry to a consideration of that devastation as judgment, if they dismiss it as some historical abomination if they think it can be attributed only to a madman Hitler and that God is not a God who is sovereign and that an event of that magnitude could take place in his ignorance or his indifference what then must he do to persuade them that he's the sovereign God of all the earth and that he makes wars to cease and he breaks the ball asunder he raises up kings and deposes them and so something like the Holocaust is going to be an inadvertent slip historically that cannot be explained the book has a premise that the judgment of the Holocaust as every previous devastation that Israel has experienced is in exact proportion to its sin. You say there's another Holocaust coming and this one will be global how then must the sin of world Jewry then eclipse the union of their fathers and in Jeremiah 30 and 31 where the prophet speaks of the time of Jacob's trouble, he says your sin is incurable you have exceeded the sins of your fathers and anyone who is a student of present day Israel has got to be increasingly alarmed and disturbed by the moral collapse of that nation listen you guys we Jews have always thought that we were superior to you morally and ethically. It's the kind of fantasy that one can indulge when we live in a ghetto and stroke our ears as we contemplate the time of it but you know what Lord Acton said power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely the only reason that Israel could indulge itself in some fantasy about some presumed moral superiority is that they were not in a place where they had to engage in the practices of nations that are immoral in order to establish their own preservation that has now happened not the least of the reasons for the establishment of Israel is not to succeed but to fail. Israel has got to recognize its own profound failure. It's the kind of thing that Germany has yet to recognize who make reparations for the Holocaust for the Jew but have never broken before God nationally to recognize that in the Holocaust is the statement of its own failure not as Germans but as man you know the one quote Christian doctrine that Julie looks upon as a part is the depravity of man they refuse to subscribe to the view that there's something inherently wicked in man and that in man is no good thing at all because we Jews are the most preeminent humanists and the celebrators of man in fact our whole undoing that will bring this devastation upon us is the outworking of humanistic presumption that has no basis in fact with regard to man. That is to say to think that Arabs can be appeased and that Islamic hatred against Israel and against the Jew can be placated by appealing to Palestinians and the Arabs to lay aside their vendetta and their desire for vengeance and to cooperate with Israel in a program of peace by which they can share with her the prosperity that will come to the Middle East and there's no question that if the Arab nations would do it they would be prospered the only mistake is that the Arab nations are not ruled by the premise that man will always seek his own best interest Israel does not know man, it does not know itself, it does not know the human condition and it is assuming that that Arabs would respond as they would respond if an invitation to consider your best interest were taken seriously the Arab world is not considering its best interest, it is out for devastation and it is ruled by demonic power that seek Israel's annihilation and God will allow that to be ventilated and expressed just to show Israel that its humanistic presumptions that are calculated outside of what God says in his word is the truth of the human condition and what has been revealed in history and revealed even in the holocaust of the Nazi time is in fact true not only about Arabs, but about themselves that there's no man good no not one and if God were to measure iniquity, who can stand all you dear saints praise God, I'm leaving tomorrow but if you ever read how many of you know the name Eric a Jewish sociologist one of the prominent intellectuals he subscribes to a view about the fall in the garden that will blow you out of your seat Adam and Eve actually were challenged by God to defy God himself they were invited to break his commandment that they should not eat of the tree because in doing that they were taking the first step to human self-assertion and human self-realization which God himself desired can you follow that? it's the most uncanny and perverse interpretation of the Adamic fall that has tainted all mankind with that same corruption ever since and it is read by Jewish theologians and intellectuals as actually being an appeal for human self-assertion to defy God and that God even welcomed and has set up the stage for that defiance to take place what can you say to people like that? No wonder God says your sin is incurable you are the epitome of mankind you are the picture of man in his stubborn self-will and resolute independence of God and therefore you must be judged more severely and therefore not only will I demonstrate before the nations the severity of that judgment by dispersing you to all nations I will demonstrate the mercy of God by restoring you from all nations for I will plant you in a land and bring you back from every nation where unto you will be scattered and I'll do it supernaturally I'll establish a highway of holiness you'll find yourself uprooted your Steven Spielbergs and heads of CEOs of corporations and secret distilleries and all the kinds of places of prominence and wealth that Jews enjoy will find themselves walking dusty and dirt red cracked mud earth like the road that brings them up to this place and out in the place where we are in northern Minnesota and any number of places that I have already seen, visited, touched and have witnessed as being places chosen for refuge and fight for Jews in their last days time of Jacob's trouble You want to know why we are in northern Minnesota and not in a tropical location on your own? Because we are on the Canadian border because we are strategically located in the wilderness of the North American nation and it's not a place that I chose I'm a New Yorker by birth I'm an urbanite I'm not a man for the rustic north woods wilderness location but 25 years ago when I was a speaker in the area and living safely in New Jersey 20 miles from New York and 2.5 million Jews they said there's a property for sale would you care to see it? I said sure, let's go for a ride they took me to a bankrupt boys camp with a no trespassing sign and a big chain across the entrance to that camp I got out of the car and I stepped over the chain and when my foot came down on the property the Lord said same God that called me by the name of Russel 35 years ago Dominion the name that that property has worn out for a quarter of a century end time teaching center community refuge and on the basis of those few words without further explanation our house in New Jersey was disposed of and our whole lifestyle was radically upturned and we were brought out to that location thinking that everything would be on that 94 acre camp the Lord showed us the farm across the road where a retired Lutheran couple were waiting to die and I had knocked on their doors the first few they ever saw and said I believe God has a kingdom intention for your property. Oh we have no intention to sell it I said. And three months later sold me that property in which I invited them to remain and their husband died and probably their wife was with us for 21 years as my spiritual mother and watched the world come through the door End time teaching center community refuge you cannot be a refuge except you be a community and this is what I'm seeing as a pattern of God in many places of the earth today. He's feeding people. He's establishing locations. They're critically and strategically located and there'll be such a remarkable networking between these physical entities but it will not be the result of any human organization this thing must not bear even the faintest simulation of anything humanly organized. It has got to be totally the work of God's spirit. You see why our relationship is so critically important why one more word from me or your misapprehension or anything that would dent our relationship or cast a shadow over it might not affect a linkage of networking that God intends for the future I've come to a point since as much as I love the word of God I love to preach the word I have hardly and ever now allowed the luxury now it's more nuts and bolts of sending out a word of alert to a church that is naive and has no expectation of the enormous things that are about to come for which they alone are the appointed salvific agency of God. What a church of what kind. Because to take these Jews in when they shall be despised the world over and be marred more than any man and have no beauty that any should desire them is not just being discomforted or being inconvenienced but being put into a place of ultimate risk Corrie ten Boom was a prototype of what God will again require from believers because to take Jews in in an anti-Christ Nazi spirit that seeks their annihilation is to put yourself at risk of experiencing death. Are you going to be willing to do it? And why should you? What's in it for you? And what did they ever do for you? And you should put yourself and your own family in such jeopardy for Jews who deserve what they're getting. That is going to be the tenor and the world opinion in a soon coming time. I don't know what's going to bring it, but it's the release of demonic spirit. It will be touched off by war, by economic recession, by oil. I don't know what by what. They will be despised. Why should you extend yourself to despise people who have no comeliness, no beauty, that you should desire them? In fact, those Christians who seem to trip over themselves and run to Israel now and are so delighted I think will be among the first of those who are so grievously disappointed in Israel's failure that their so-called love, which is only sentiment, will quickly turn exactly into the opposite. The only kind of love that will endure and be to the Jews what we must is well beyond the realm of human sentiment and must be exclusively and totally the love, the unconditional love, of God himself. There's a premium. There's something required from us as the Church in this ultimate. Ultimate in love, ultimate in faith, ultimate in counting ourselves privileged, even if our involvement with Jews would not only put us in the place of jeopardy, but in the place of death, because we have a knowledge of the eternal reward that is theirs, that suffer such a consequence through their obedience in the purpose of God. So a church of the last days that's going to take Jews in is a church that is preeminently knowledgeable with the reality of eternity and eternal reward and eternal judgment, whose love is beyond that which is sentimental, and whose faith is more than charismatic. Because when Israel falls into that condition and acknowledges, we are cut off, we are without hope, we are dry bones, God himself does not address the bones. He turns to a son of man and he says, you prophesy to those bones that they might live. The son of man is commanded to prophesy, even though he has already protested that he doesn't think that those bones can live. When you look over the text of Ezekiel 37, the hand of the Lord comes upon the son of man and brings him out and down and into the midst of the valley of dry bones. It's not a place where he would have come except the hand of God pressed him into the grip of Israel's death. Even a prophet would shrink from having to see the reality of the truth of Israel's condition. But unless he sees it, he cannot address it. It's imperative for us to see the truth of Israel and Israel's condition as God himself sees it. How shall we come to that kind of prophetic seeing that is painful if we will not first see ourselves in the kind of truth in which God would have us to see the condition of Israel? Are we willing to come down and out from some lofty place of our own imagining and into the truth and the reality of what our own condition is? Is it preliminary in a step toward the kind of prophetic realization, maturity, to which we must come or we cannot be God's agent? If we will not see as God sees, we cannot speak for God. We have even the desire that those bones should live. And why should we? Because if Israel is extinct and extinguished, we alone then are the son that receives all of God's acknowledgement and attention. It's like the brother of the prodigal son who is not happy for his return. So the church has got to go through a remarkable refining of its own to flush out every kind of thing that would disqualify it from being to Israel what it was in the last days, or there will be no Jewish survival at all. There are some people who are not here tonight who know a very saintly Jewish brother in the Lord, Paul Volk, who is the co-author of one of my books out there, Spirit of Proof. And he had an experience when a Jewish hobo was picked up off the side of the road and brought to Bento because the name sounds Jewish. I was away on one of my trips and I learned about it afterwards that this guy in stinking legs was brought to our place and Paul got something for him to eat and brought him to a room and a place to sleep and before he left, the man began to mutter and to complain that it was not good enough. And when Paul heard that, and you have to know Paul, he's not an outcast type, very quiet, very moderate, never raises his voice, and it's just a really sane, tempered saying. But when he heard the ingratitude of this Jew, he said, or he said, something goes up in my gut like unto murder. And if that's the reaction of one Jew with the ingratitude of another, how will you gentiles fare when Jews will come and not hang on your neck with gratitude but prick you and and zing you with their ingratitude, with their anger, with their irritation, with their vexation? I can tell you, point blank, they are going to be in their worst imaginable condition. And even when we are at our best, we're difficult to take. How will you receive us then when we will be ungrateful, when we will be critical, when we will find fault, when we will blame you? That the whole thing that has now come upon us is the fault of Christianity itself a second time because of the anti-Semitic references in the New Testament and other kinds of things that Jews will seize upon as an explanation for their How will you bear that? If there's anything in you that yet remains of self, of a kind that you have not recognized, it will in that moment be found out. And something will be flushed that will shame you. Anger, retaliation, not the precious revelation of the Lord for which reason he has set up the whole apparatus of flight and escape in the last days. Because Ezekiel chapter 26 says, I will meet with you with a fury poured out in the wilderness of the nations. And there I will plead with you face to face and there you will come into the body of my covenant and under the rug of my authority. That's how it is that the redeemed of the Lord shall return to Zion as we did. They didn't leave it in that condition. Something has happened to them in their expulsion and in their flight by which they have met with God face to face in the wilderness of the nations. And I believe that what God is symbolically saying is that the revelation of God, the face of God, the mercy of God, the unconditional love of God, that is not irritated, not vexed, not angry, not disappointed, but can receive Jews in whatever their condition because it does not make any requirement. It does not impose any condition. That's where God's love is. Because he loved us and died for us while we were yet sinners. And so he's asking for a church that bears his nature to be to the Jews what he was to us while we were in a despicable and uncommon state of iniquity. And that ends the age. That's the revelation of the wisdom of God. That's the demonstration of God as God. Through the church for which reason God has created all things in order that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might be demonstrated. Thus says the Lord God in chapter 49 of Isaiah, I will soon lift up my hand to the nations. The issue is the nations. I raise my signal to the people so they shall bring your sons in their bosom and your daughters shall be carried on their shoulders. Kings shall be your foster fathers and your queens your nursing mothers. With their faces to the ground they shall bow down to you and lick the dust of your feet. Then you will know that I am the Lord. Those who wait for me shall not be put to shame. What a remarkable prophetic statement of something yet future. That the same nations that may have been involved in Israel's devastation, after they see the glory of God that he will visit upon that nation when the light shall arise upon them as the noon day will then honor them and bear their refugees and those in flight back on their own shoulders and succor them and the wealth of nations will come to them. And nations will come up annually to the Feast of Pentecost to honor the God of Israel. For he has demonstrated himself as the God of all the earth and the God of all nations through his treatment of that nation before the face of the nations. Then all flesh shall know that I am the Lord, your Savior and your Redeemer the Mighty One of Jacob. I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh and they shall be drunk with their own blood as with wine. They visited this upon you, I will judge them. They were the Lord of my chastisement, but they went further than my intention. They ventilated their own spite and hatred beyond anything that I required. Now I will judge them and you will know in that judgment of them, not only the God who has rescued you but that I am the Lord, your Savior and the Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob. These are eschatological statements. It's given to the prophet and he speaks of it as somehow present or past event while it's yet future because he sees it with a certain kind of immediacy as if it's a present happening. But all that I'm reading here is yet future and the context shows it because then you will know that I am the Lord. Does this world know that I am the Lord? Does it know who I am? Who is the I am? No. They will know when this God reveals himself as Savior and Redeemer out of an extremity from which no man could have saved them or could have raised them. Only very God as God, the God of Jacob and the God of Israel. Therefore the Redeemer of the world shall repent of Zion and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads. You know why? Not only because there shall not again be another upturning or a casting out and a terror or a flight but because they shall be honored above all nations and all nations shall come up to their trust. For out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord unto Jerusalem. They shall be the walkers of the kingdom of God. They shall be the ambassadors of that kingdom. God is going to so bless them millennially that the treader of grapes and those who take in the crops will be nipped at their heels by those who are plowing for the next season. One crop will run into another in such a providential abundance that God will visit upon that nation that shall suffer affliction no more and never know terror or panic or fear. Your peace. I will be your peace. I will be your safety. No more shall you know terror. Every reference in these prophecies show that the last historic experience of Israel was terror, panic, fear, flight, violence. So Isaiah 52 Awake, awake, brilliant Israel for I am trying a beautiful promise of Jerusalem the holy city where the uncircumcised and the unclean shall enter you no more. Shake yourself from the dust. What are you doing in the dust? That's where you were driven by the uncircumcised and the unclean. Rise up, O captive Jerusalem. Loose the bonds from your neck, O captive daughter of Solomon. For thus says the Lord, you were sold for nothing and shall be redeemed without your name. If you read chapter 51 speaks of it going down into the dust. The two things have befallen you. Verse 19 of Isaiah 51. Devastation and destruction, famine and sorrow. Who will comfort you? Your children have fainted. They lie at the head of every street like an antelope in a net. They are full of the wrath of the Lord and the rebuke of your God. The rod might be Arab nations but the anger and the wrath and the chastisement and the judgment is God's. Therefore, hear this, you who are wounded, who are drunk from that which wine. Thus says your sovereign Lord, your God will please the cause of his people. See, I have taken from your hand a cup of stag ring. You shall drink it no more from the bowl of my wrath. And I will put it in the hand of your tormentors who have said to you, bow down that we may walk on you and you have made your back like the ground and like the street for them to walk on. I don't know of any previous judgment that has ever come upon Israel where they have suffered a humiliation of this kind where people have not only defeated them but humiliated them by having them lie down that we might walk over you. You know what a key is to prophetic interpretation? The proximity to the event itself. When the intifada came, when the stirring up of Israel came, when fifty years of Arab resentment and Islamic hatred is brought to a pitch, to a boil, you can see a fulfillment that we would not otherwise have understood except in the context of history and the current events. Israel is not only vanquished but humiliated. But God will take a cup of wrath out of their hands and restore her and break the bonds of her captivity. And listen you sentinels, lift up your voice. This is not Israel, the sentinels may be us. Together they sing for joy, for in plain sight they see the return of the Lord to Zion. Break forth together we're singing you ruins of Jerusalem. What? They see the return of the Lord to Zion in the context of the ruins of Jerusalem? Yes. For the Lord is contained in the heavens waiting for the restoration of all things spoken by the prophets. He's imposed upon himself a restraint and he cannot come and occupy the holy hill of Zion as the inheritor of David's throne because he alone is the only only descendant of David qualified to occupy the throne of David and to occupy it eternally. He cannot come to Zion until Zion is restored and brought out of its ruins. I tried to share this with John van Doven in his office in Jerusalem that Israel shall be reduced to rubble and ruin. He said, look at the earth moving equipment, that is taking place now. But dear man, look exactingly at the Scripture that says Israel shall be rebuilt upon its own ruins as unto the Lord. What you're seeing is not that rebuilding, but that is what is now being rebuilt will constitute the ruins in which the everlasting city will be rebuilt as a fit habitation for the Lord himself. I hate to tell you what his response was. The Lord has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God. Israel is being judged for its own sin, but the judgment is revealed to all nations and they shall see God's holy arm laid bare. No nation then will be with excuse that they can still hold Allah as God or any of their deities when the God of Jacob is a lone God and has revealed it in both his judgment and his mercy. The nations then that will not acknowledge God, Israel's God is God, will suffer the judgments that will then fall. So my servant shall prosper, he shall be exalted and lifted up, he shall be very high. And there were many who were astonished at them so marred were they was their appearance beyond human semblance and therefore beyond that of men so shall they startle many nations and kings shall shut their mouths because of them for that which had not been told them they shall see and that which they had not heard they shall contemplate. Those nations that have not regarded the Calvary of Jesus and the crucifixion of Jesus shall visibly see the reenactment of that drama in the servant people Israel who are called to servitude like their master before them through a road of suffering and chastisement brokenness, repentance, restoration and return. They will see the enactment again before their faces that which had not been told them they shall see. Nations shall be startled that were not startled by the crucifixion of Jesus but will see the truth of that crucifixion in the crucified body of God's ancient people in their last day of preparation through all nations. They have the road to Calvary to walk because they like the Lord before them are called to servitude. He bore chastisement they will bear chastisement and a broken nation that has come out of it will bless all the families of the earth and be that nation of priests and elect of the world that this preparation alone can obtain. Well enough. Let me pray for you delinquent souls. The word itself is an affliction so Lord I pray that your word if this is true if I'm not off on some subjective fancy, if this is not a tangent peculiar to myself if this is indeed a true prophetic rendering of that which must overcome the past put some iron in the souls of these saints temper their joy with a solemnity of that which must precede Israel's final redemption and grant them that prophetic maturity that they could be a son of man company that speaks to the bones that they might live that the word out of their mouths is not a human will wishing that will fall to the ground and leave Israel in a state of death but have the cogency and power of the creative prophetic word of God to raise those bones that a whole nation might live to the providence of a church brought to a son of man prophetic constituency because they were willing to come down and out and into the grip of things as God inserts these Lord I ask your blessing on this word my God how can it possibly succeed, it's a mind barbwire, it offends us, it requires us to consider God in ways that are not compatible in the way that we have liked to behold him as kind, as gracious, as loving how do we reconcile this cup of wrath with the God whom we celebrate give this people grace surely the issue of Israel rightly apprehended is not only the issue of the nations but the issue of the church itself it alone is calculated to save the church from its own subjectivity, from its own egocentricity, from its own naivety, from its own simplicity from its own inadequate view of God and of itself and I ask reality what I ask that the truth of this eschatological future this catalytic apocalyptic devastation will be heard and received and bring an iron into the soul of this people, a reality a truth and a preparation in a conscious way of something that they know must come it will not be guesswork it will not be speculation, they will know that they know that God has given them a distant property in a remote location that Jews who might otherwise have perished in urban locations will find here not only a place of safety and refuge but a place of prophetic explanation for the whole predicament that will suddenly have come upon them for which they've had no preparation they will see in this wilderness the face of God the mercy of God the unconditional love of God by a people who have anticipated them and welcomed every deep sanctifying work of God within the interworking of their own body and in the day that these Jews come they will not be able to be offended in an hour Jews will be despicable, hated and have no beauty that any should desire this people will embrace them and take them in and not only bring them the issue of a physical survival but of an eternal salvation Lord seal this word this inadequate word this initial word and send this people on the prophetic journey let them get into the scriptures, let them read Amos and Isaiah and Zechariah and the minor prophets and see the volume of things to which Peter in the book of Acts referring when he said the Lord is contained in the heavens waiting for the restoration spoken by all the prophets since the world began he's still waiting so I bless this people Lord, I leave my peace behind in their house, seal this word let it perform its work not return to you Lord, for if you will not accomplish with this people this admirable people with such potential through word and spirit and preparation to fit them, what hope can I have for the church anywhere in the earth? If this people cannot hear your word and be set in motion to the necessary preparation to which they're called where then can it be hoped for? I bless them, I bless Doug, David, I bless those who are joined with him in leadership and responsibility that new dimensions of understanding new dimensions of courage new dimensions of the word brought in a kind of earnestness and intent that it did not have before the reality of this scenario was brought upon them. Thank you Lord in your precious hands let me commit this word and this people in Jesus name Amen. Thank you Arch the scattering of God's people of Israel Hasn't that already taken place? The what? The scattering The scattering of the Jews The scattering? No. I mean there have been dispersions I myself was born in Brooklyn The pattern of God's chastisement by judgment is always the same Sin, judgment devastation, expulsion, flight exile So this last days and final one that is yet future takes that same form But how do we distinguish then this future expulsion and flight and exile from previous ones The answer is that you can see it in the context of the prophetic scriptures itself. For example in Amos chapter 9 where God says I will sift you through the nations but in light of the question Hasn't that already taken place? What makes us to consider that is a future sifting because it ends with the tabernacle of David being restored. And Edom and the nations called by my name will come under it. And the tabernacle of David is not some form of Hebraic worship which the charismatic community has construed to be The tabernacle of David is the Davidic kingdom. And Edom is a symbol of Gentile nations So with the judgment with the dispersal is a restoration of God's theocratic rule. And then how does the chapter end? Your cities will be rebuilt that have been laid waste Which cities? Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and the reaper will not be able to keep up with the power and the solar of sea Millennial blessing and the last word is and you will not again ever be upturned from your land One way to determine whether I am off on this is if there will yet again be a future expulsion out of Israel then that is the key to rightly understanding Amos chapter 9 and all the scriptures. If it does not happen and Israel remains in safety and will work its way through its problems and become the blessing to all nations for which we have hope, then I am I am misconstruing. Events themselves will clearly depict read the whole context as I just gave the example in the stupor of a man who is a prophetic man and thinks that present Israel is that restoration because he said look, it's being rebuilt but in Jeremiah it says it will be rebuilt upon its own heaps as unto the Lord. We mustn't miss every syllable of God's word and I think that most who have a sanguine hopeful expectancy for present Israel are guilty of a shallow consideration of scripture. They have looked for text that they can use merely to establish their vain hope but they have not opened themselves to the word of God and let the word determine God's destiny. They have an agenda. You know what the response to me is in many cases when I present my view to these men in Israel? It's remarkable the consistency of the response. But aren't they saying how can this be? What about my ministry? How can it be that Israel should be able to say, what about my ministry? This has got to be wrong because look I'm in Israel and God has got to honor and bless my ministry. They don't even know yet what their ministry is if in fact they are there in the purpose of God. It is yet to be revealed and it will be to move as many Israels who are the elect remnant to a place of safety in their fight and panic and not what they think it presently is. So the scripture itself and I want to say this I believe I'm a prophetic man and that I understand what I understand by virtue of that office but it never came to me by vision. It never came to me in a dream. It never came in some supernatural kind of thing. It came through a progressive appropriation of the truth of God in the whole tenor of the prophetic structure. And that's the vow to safety. Any other thing that purports to be a view that comes subjectively through revelation is suspect. The word of God. The word of God. Read the word of God. Read the references to the cities that are laid waste and made ruined and desolate. What is being referred to when it says in Isaiah the land has become our destruction. What does it mean? And you will know that I am the Lord who has spoken and performed this. If Israel does not yet presently know the Lord doesn't it indicate that these destructions then must be future? You see? Any other question? No. Art I was going to ask you but you go far further obviously than anything I have seen but the supreme court judgment of the three families, the three Jewish believing families declaring they are not Jewish because they believe in Jesus must bring that government rejection of the Lord and his Messiah. It must bring judgment. Judgment must bring judgment on because Israel has judged the rejection of Jesus I myself was cast out of the land It must bring judgment when it has happened for the second time. She is making a statement Forgive me. It is horrifying Believers in the land and their expulsion is already a case for God's judgment but there will be much worse sins than that. For example the sanctioning of torture of a supposed terrorist captive. Can you ever believe that a day would come that a Jewish nation would sanction torture as being a legitimate exercise for the opinion of information? Jews for all of their moral and ethical superiority would justify torture at the highest levels of government because it becomes a necessity. How can you have a man who is a suspected Thomas terrorist and not extract from him every scrap of information that might save a bus bombing or something going off in the streets of Jerusalem that would send mails and shrapnel through a shopping section loaded with pedestrians. Is that information going to be readily given over a cup of tea? You see their paradox? They have it back to the walls. They're fighting for life, for survival, and therefore they must employ every expediency that any nation has ever employed for its own preservation. But how then is it a distinct nation? How then is it Israel? How then does it show forth the uniqueness of what Jews have supposed themselves to be? Because when Israel was born with a hope in 1948 it was to demonstrate to nations what a Jewish nation would be. And we have contradicted every hope for expectancy by the exigencies of crisis of need that come from having to preserve ourselves without God. The absence of God has compelled us to rise of conduct that contradict every hope in the nation and will invite the judgment of God. It's dangerous to live without God. It brings you to a conduct that God must necessarily judge. I was reading in the Psalms the other day I am your defense, I am your shield. I will save you. Where is there an Israeli who will stand in public and say, hey, maybe we were considered that the God of the prophets is our God and that negotiations will not save us but only set a trap that will be our death and seek him? Even American presidents call days of fasting and prayer for certain crises in American life in secular nations. But Israel does not consider God. They do not seek him and therefore must suffer the consequence of being ruled by their own self-consideration which is the very essence of sin and the rejection of God. Somebody else? Joshua? I've got two questions. The first one, is it not possible that Israel itself will be destroyed within the land that they will retain some of that land? In other words, the nation itself the state will not be destroyed but the nation will. And then the second one is that Jesus spoke about not worshipping on this or that mountain but in spirit and in truth. So when Israel is restored, why would it be necessary for people to go up to the mountain of the Lord when there's no temple there? I can't hear you. Let me take the first question. That raises a very significant question. In Jeremiah God is quite clear that the nation before him will never be destroyed. So long as the moon gives its light, the sun, the stars, the firmament the nation of Israel will always be established before him. But we need to distinguish between the nation which is an entity of one kind and the state which is an entity of another. Yes, God will preserve the nation but he'll not withhold a judgment upon the state. So we mustn't think that the two things are synonymous. The state of Israel is a Zionist endeavor that has had a degree of establishment through the there's a word I stumbled over God's help me somehow. It's not that it's in his will but it's in his permission. At any rate the nation will be retained. God will not extinguish it. That's why a remnant will return. But the state, God has no obligation to preserve it. It is the very demonstration of sinfulness and will come under judgment. Why then would the people say our hope is cut off. We are without hope. Why is there a sighing and a sorrow? Why will the redeemed of the Lord return without a lasting judgment on their heads and sorrow and sighing will flee away. For what are they sighing and sorrowing? The loss of the state itself. Israel's last hope will be removed. But that's not the end of the nation, let alone the prophetic fulfillment that will come out of the crucible of judgment and will be an everlasting glory to God. Present Israel is God's preliminary provision for the setting in motion those judgments and death out of which the resurrected nation will come that will bless all the families of the earth. Second question? Just before you go on, do you understand what Art is saying about the nation? I completely understand but what I'm saying is... I'm asking everybody. Maybe you should just explain to them what you mean by the nation. You know, of course it's not all Israel. Israel is more likely a spiritual designation than it is an ethnic. And we are part of that holy nation and that enduring entity that will go on not only millennially but eternally. That's the nation that God is speaking of. It's the redeemed. It's the elect of God. When you read Stephen's statement to the doctors of the war that led to his martyrdom, he paints a picture of two lines running through the whole of Israel's history and he ends by saying, as your fathers have done, so do you also. You do always grieve the Holy Spirit of God and to prove it, the same men whom he's addressing who think themselves to be the Israel of God, kill him by stoning him. So it is evidently not all Israel is Israel but there is a nation and God knows who they are. They are the elect of God. He will preserve them. There will be a remnant that God will sift out from the judgment and upon whom does the judgment fall? In Amos and in other places in the prophets it says and those that are those rebels that transgress against me and who say this shall not come upon us, I will bring them out of the lands where they have sojourned but I will not bring them into the land. Not the least reason for the last day's sifting is to bring out of it a surviving remnant of the redeemed who are the nations. The issue of Israel as a nation is not the issue of numerics. It doesn't have to be many but few but God will so fill the land with them and their progeny that they will complain that there's no space, the land is too narrow for us. So we need to distinguish between the nation the spiritual entity out of this natural seed because not all Israel is Israel and not all from Abraham are the children of Abraham but those whom God has elected whom he will bring through the fire even in the last judgment in Jerusalem where two thirds of the people perish both in the city and the nation one third are preserved and they are brought through the fire. So that is the nation. So we mustn't confuse that with the present political entity that God has no obligation to preserve and the fact has been established to reveal Israel's failure and set in motion the very serious objections itself brought upon their own head by the kinds of things that take place when the people seek to establish their own state of independent authority. It's interesting because an orthodox minority within Israel that has never recognized the political state of Israel because they say only the Messiah can establish the state and all of the troubles that have come upon the people of Israel they hold is the result of atheistic, socialistic men seeking to wrest humanly and politically a land that God himself has not given. When you read in the scriptures it's an inheritance I will give you, you don't wrest it. And I when the final restoration takes place God says I will plant you in the land. It's such a gentle metaphor of the husband who inserts Israel peacefully and will not injure their neighbors who have themselves been judged. There's a difference between planting and wresting and Israel needs to see the difference between the consequence that comes upon itself by its own self-assertion independent of God which is to say to act as God and that which comes from it is given. Remember Paul this morning he thanked God for the grace which is given. The Israel of God lives only from that which is given. It never rests. Jesus himself did not rest. Even though you say that the state of Israel has become idolatry for Jewish people now, isn't it so that the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948 was a sign that God's favor upon Jewish people had come? That's how it's interpreted. I wish I could think of a word that eludes me. God was certainly a factor that nation would not have been established without his providence. That's the word I'm looking for. The providence of God allowed the establishment, but it was not the intention of succeeding but the intention of failing. We have to set in motion a series of things that would bring bad people to an ultimate crisis alone by which they would recognize their God as their Savior. But we have mistakenly thought that that was the final and waited for its fulfillment. Even now, though Israel has been brought to an increasing place of despair, there are Christians that are hoping for amelioration and progressive improvement. There's a real, very deep ideological, philosophical and spiritual question at stake. Can a nation serve God and bless all the families of the earth and be an eternal glory to God that has obtained that through progressive improvements and amelioration? Or must it necessarily have been put through a process that was required of God's own Son of a suffering, a judgment, a death, and a resurrection before he attained to his glory? If Israel is to attain to her glory millennially and eternally, is she going to obtain it through some means less than what God's Son was required to experience? We do err because we have not sufficiently considered that before there's a glory, there's a necessary suffering. And when Jesus came to his disciples, he said, O fools, and slow of heart to understand that the Messiah must suffer before he attains to his glory. And if Jesus were here now, he would say that to the church that is sympathetic to the cause of the world. O fools, and slow of heart not to understand that Israel must suffer before he attains to his glory. You know why you don't understand that? Because you have avoided suffering for yourself. You have sidestepped. You have seen to the conditions of your life that ensure you against suffering, but therefore you have fallen short of the glory. There's no glory without suffering. How much then for permission does he lack to reveal God and be the locus of his rule over Israel? When the Israelites came out of Egypt, they had to also take the land by force. Even with the divine hand of God upon them, but they still had to actually physically fight. So what makes it different now? I mean, now you just have a plot in their own land, but they still have to fight. So why? I don't think it excludes fighting, physical fighting to be given that land, because it never did exclude it in the last dispensation. So that's just it. It's taking the liberty to think that the pattern of Israel coming out of Egypt and taking the Canaanite lands that were under the judgment of God whose cup of iniquity was full and that the coming of Israel was the law of God's chastisement upon Canaan as somehow a pattern, a paradigm that describes what Israel has done. I don't think so. God did not bring Israel to judge the Arabs or the Palestinians whose cup of iniquity was full and then take over the land. It just doesn't fit but rather the scenario that I see that human expediency, the issue of the Holocaust, the necessity for homeland and various political factors and also the fact that the time of Jacob's trouble must have its inception in Jerusalem and in therefore a nation that has been at least politically restored and set in motion the aggravating tensions that prompt the breaking out of the retribution against it, which will then have consequences worldwide rather than being a fulfillment of the land being given to them because they have been the instrument of God's judgment on the existing experience. That would be stretching it a great deal, in my opinion. Arden, Ezekiel 36, he says, I will bring you back in the land for my namesake, not for your sake. But can't the nation be destroyed within itself without a I mean, will its existence cease completely? Can't it just be destroyed in the land of Israel and be changed and brought, restored within the land? In other words, it doesn't have to be all exiled right out of the land in order for God to Then we have to understand where the word desolation is used frequently in prophetic scriptures. The cities are left desolate and without inhabitants. When does that take place? Where have the inhabitants gone? Now, I believe that there will yet be a residue within the land, and maybe these are the ones that see Jesus when he comes in that final tribulation to rescue them from the old nations that have come against Jerusalem to destroy it. But there will be such a flight out because the cities are left desolate, without inhabitants. They're left in ruins. And the words that are used to describe the survivors are captivity. So there's an exodus out, and it says in scripture, the prophets, you'll no longer remember me as the God who brought you out of Egypt. What he's saying that was our distinctive historic memory. Our nation that was established and being brought out of Egypt. But he says no, you'll no longer remember me for that. But you'll remember me hereafter as the God who has brought you out of all nations into which I have scattered you. Therefore, I foresee a global uprooting and a scattering of Israel through all nations. Both the political state and also Jews within nations will be upturned and moved because it will be an exilic it will be an exodus of so profound a kind in all nations that Israel millennially will remember how God has brought them not out of Egypt, but out of all the nations into which they have been scattered implies the kind of force of an involuntary kind that has required them to move. That's why when I go to Japan, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, it doesn't matter where I am, I can say with confidence perpetually, Jews are going to be moving through this land. In fact, I said in New Zealand, your entire land is a wilderness of the nations. And I don't know how and by what means, but why through the nations? Because not only are Jews scattered in the nations and will be, but because nations themselves must be sifted by the very presence of Jews, and their response to Jews in their Christ-like road to Calvary will determine their own eternal destiny. For the first judgment that is described in Scripture upon the seeding of Jesus as king with the return to Zion is the judgment of the nations over one question separating the sheep from the goats. What did you do the least of these, my brethren? There will not be a Gentile in the world who will be with excuse, when did I see you naked, thirsty, hungry or in prison? Therefore there is a necessity for an expulsion and flight of Jews to all nations because God is not only sifting Israel, he's sifting the nations as well, and particularly the church in all nations. And it's interesting, those who say, when did we see you? Preface that by saying, Lord, when did we see you? So they are familiar with the word Lord, but are evidently not in the quality of relationship that Jesus can recognize them. Because he cast them into the lake of fire reserved for the devil and his angels, because they were not able either to recognize him in the least of his brethren nor to extend mercy. But the righteous for whom the kingdom is prepared have passed their test. The issue of Israel distinguishes and separates who in fact is the Israel of God and the church of the nations in their response to the Israel that is brought through them. You see, there are multiple purposes of God that are served. That's why I can say with confidence you can't pray this away. You're not going to save Israel from this extremity by prayer. It's something to which Israel must necessarily pass. You can no more save Israel from it than you can save Jesus. And when Peter said, Lord, let this be far from you, which is exactly the kind of heart and attitude we would say about Israel, Lord, let this be far from them. Have they suffered enough already? He'll say to us, as he said to Peter, get behind me, Satan, for you will save and stink of the things which be of man and not of God. You simply do not understand the issues that pertain to my glory that require this exact suffering. And you want to absolve them from the necessity of it, as Peter wanted to say to me. And had I heeded him, there would not be a safe soul in the world. Out of that humane, compassionate consideration that men will compliment as being the very epitome of kindness, he said that that's what saved me. We're faced with very much the same questions. Can I ask, what then will bring the repentance finally? Will it be the great suffering or will it be the goodness of God? Because it says in Ezekiel 36, after the return and the rebuilding of the cities that had been laid waste, you will despise yourself in your own sight for your iniquity and for your sins against me. It takes their return as God's mercy extended in their yet unbelieving condition to break their hearts when they recognize that God has been their Savior, against whom they have wailed and blasphemed all their days long. So repentance is the gift of God. And in fact, in Zechariah, when we shall see him whom we have pierced and mourn for him as one mourns for one's only son, and be in bitterness as one is in bitterness for one's firstborn, and every family shall mourn and repent apart, even wives and husbands shall have to be separated because of their death of that remorse and repentance unlike anything the world has ever seen. That itself is not something that Israel can perform, but is a gift because it says, upon the city of David, the city of Jerusalem, I will pour out the spirit of supplication. God is not even going to allow Israel the ability to perform its own repentance, lest it ghost that it was an agent in its own restoration. Therefore, it is imperative that repentance itself be ghosted, that Israel can boast in nothing even as we can boast in nothing, because repentance is not something that we can perform, and it must come from God. Where do you see the new, the full temple, the temple, rebuilding of the temple, where do you see this in your prophetic... This issue of the temple, because the abomination of desolation that leads to the commencement of the time of Jacob's trouble, begins by the interpretation of making a temple, a restored temple, which now does not exist. So it leads many Christians into a kind of condition of false safety, like, well, art's going on at the deep end. There's nothing that imperative that hasn't even begun a temple yet, and even the attempt to lay a cornerstone has brought such a response of anger from the Arabs in Jerusalem that they were mobbed. Well, there's a brother with us who has a very interesting view. He said, it's not necessary for a whole temple to be rebuilt to restore sacrifice. Only the rudiments of that temple in the appropriate location would be sufficient to have the sacrifices annulled by an anti-Christ figure who calls for that, with whom they have made a treaty, and then demands their worship is done. So we need not expect that a whole edifice be raised up, if indeed that's the way to interpret it. Because there are two interpretations. Luke 21 does not indicate the abomination of desolation that takes place in the temple, or the cessation of sacrifice, but implies rather that the desolation is an army of Gentiles ready on the border of Jerusalem to come in to evade and to make Jerusalem a desolation. So, take your pick. If there's going to be a temple with an anti-Christ figure calling for a cessation of sacrifice, then it need not require an entire building, just the rudiments. And that could happen with one of the peace conditions that are now being negotiated. Where Israel would give up certain concessions to the Palestinians to have an East Jerusalem as their capital so long as a temple location would be granted to the Orthodox of Jerusalem, who by now are the majority in that city and are the balancing political power in the entire nation. So it's easy to consider that that might be the outpouring of this false peace.