Day 11 of God Keeps Covenant: THE LORD’S PURPOSES ON THE EARTH

After studying the history of the Jewish people and before we move on to more recent events, let us step back to look at the big picture of the Lord’s priorities. How is He fulfilling His Word “on the earth with certainty and without delay”?

First, the Gospel is spreading across the face of the earth at a staggering pace. Bible translators are now using advanced computer technology to speed their vital work. The Internet is making the Gospel available to millions previously without access to its message. Thousands are daily risking their lives to obey the Lord’s command to “go and make disciples of all nations.” (Matthew 28:19)

Also in His discourse with His disciples concerning the time of His return, the Lord Jesus  gave these same marching orders: “And this Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end shall come.”  (Matthew 24:14) 

 We read John’s vision in Revelation 7:9 of the “great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.” And we are stirred to pray harder, give more and go where the Lord sends us that the maximum number of people may come into His Kingdom.

Another of the Lord’s priorities is His Church, whom He loves so passionately that He calls her His Bride. Much of the emphasis in the letters of Paul, Peter and John is on teaching the followers of Jesus how to grow up in Him, turn from worldly ways, walk with Him and love others as He did. We are to be “without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” (Ephesians 5:27) 

The Lord Jesus is at the right hand of the Father interceding for us that we, His Bride, will make ourselves ready for His coming. (Revelation 19:7) He will help us but we must prepare. We must continually walk more closely with Him, our beloved Bridegroom.

Almost obscured from the Church’s view is a third priority – a distinct stream flowing through the Scriptures – the return of the Jews to their land and their restoration to their Lord. This stream is an integral part of the river of God’s great purposes on the earth. For most of the past 2,000 years this priority has been flowing underground. But this stream is bursting forth as a powerful reality in our day to take its rightful place in the Church.

My desire in this devotional is to set before you just a portion of the tremendous weight of evidence in the Scriptures that the physical and spiritual restoration of Israel is absolutely essential in the Lord’s big picture. His Word cannot be fulfilled on the earth without the promises in the Old Testament Prophets concerning Israel coming to pass.

Why Israel? Chapter 8 – ISRAEL AND THE RETURN OF CHRIST by author Derek Prince.

Another very important observation about the centrality of Israel to God’s plan is that the return of Christ focuses specifically on the land of Israel.

Climax in Jerusalem

The last three chapters of Zechariah, 12-14, all relate to the period of the return of the Lord. Let’s look at the beginning of those chapters, Zechariah 12:1-3:

“The burden of the Word of the Lord against Israel. Thus says the Lord who stretches out the heavens, lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him: “Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of drunkenness to all the surrounding peoples, when they lay siege against Judah and Jerusalem. And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it.”

This passage makes it clear that the climax of the age is not going to take place in New York, London, or Tokyo. It is going to take place in Jerusalem. That is the setting for the last act of the world’s drama.

The Lord’s Return

In the New Testament, when Jesus ascended into heaven from the Mount of Olives, the angels said to the disciples who stood there looking up into heaven.

“This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.” Acts 1:11

Jesus went from the Mount of Olives and He will return to the Mount of Olives. He went in a cloud and He will return in a cloud. That Scripture will be fulfilled exactly.

This is the scenario for the end of the age. Here is what I want to point out to you: Everything predicted in the Bible at the last period before Jesus comes focuses on Israel, Jerusalem, the Land, and the People. In other words, if they were not in place, the return of Jesus could not take place.

Day 10 of God Keeps Covenant: THEY WILL REBUILD

The transformation of the land of Israel from mosquito-infested swamps and barren desert to productive farms, vineyards and orchards is amazing. The Lord has blessed Israelis’ hard work. One indication is the jet stream, which actually shifted so that some of the former desert land has regular rain again.

Millions of trees have been planted on the barren slopes – many by Christians.  Each visit my husband and I make to Israel, we see Isaiah 51:3 becoming more of a reality.  The Lord “will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the Lord.” 

For many years now, Israeli jets have departed nightly full of fruit and flowers for the tables of Europe – a direct fulfillment of Isaiah 27:6, “In days to come Jacob will take root, Israel will bud and blossom and fill all the world with fruit.”  Even in the grocery stores of America we can now purchase Israeli fresh produce.

In the Negev desert, exceptional olive orchards and vineyards are developing using brackish water pumped from thousands of feet below ground. 

“They…will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations.” (Isaiah 61:4) The rebuilding has been intense throughout the years of Israel’s existence. Their ability to absorb and house new immigrants is astounding. Their rebuilt cities are clean and orderly.

Never before in history has a dead language been revived. Yet in Israel today, Hebrew is spoken everywhere, and immigrants are required to attend Hebrew classes upon arrival.

Never before has a nation, which was dispersed into many countries, remained intact as a distinct people. Ethnic groups have always been absorbed after a few generations. Yet the Lord has kept Israel as a nation even in her long exile.

The Lord has remembered His covenant and His everlasting love for His nation. The time to favor Zion has come.

Day 9 of God Keeps Covenant: CAN A NATION BE BORN IN A DAY?

Let’s return briefly to the Bible College in Wales. In 1947, a number of the young students there sensed the Lord asking them to temporarily lay down their missionary calls and stay to intercede for the birth of the State of Israel. “We pleaded,” wrote Rees Howells in his diary, “that because of His covenant with Abraham 4,000 years ago, God would take His people back to their land, and Palestine (3) should again become a Jewish State.”(4)

On the day of the mandatory United Nations’ vote to allow Israel’s status as a sovereign nation, there was much prayer. The first vote did not pass. The college intercessors went back into more intense prayer and believed they saw “God’s angels influencing those men in the United Nations Conference to work on behalf of God’s people.” The next day the news came of the needed two-thirds majority. The college proclaimed November 28, 1947, “one of the greatest days for the Holy Spirit in the history of these 2,000 years.” (5)

Fighting continued for the next five months between the Arab nations and the Jewish people. However in May 1948, the Jewish council in Jerusalem signed Israel’s Declaration of Independence. Modern Israel was “born in a day.”

In less than 24 hours, seven Arab countries declared war against this new state. Miraculously this fledgling, ill-equipped nation was victorious. Even after she was attacked again in1967, her forces prevailed and broke through to the Western Wall – all that was left of the Old Temple. At that moment all of Jerusalem came back into Jewish hands for the first time since they were exiled to Babylon 600 years before Christ. (6)

Day 8 of God Keeps Covenant: THE TIME TO FAVOR ZION

I will never forget the gathering in the large cafeteria of a major industrial company in Cleveland, Ohio.  Derek Prince was addressing two thousand eager listeners. The year was 1971 – twenty-three years after the formation of the state of Israel. The air was electric as we heard this renowned Bible teacher expound on how this verse related to   Israel’s birth as a nation.

Profound questions were being addressed: Had 1948 been a turning point in history? One of the Lord’s “suddenlies”? An appointed time that had escaped the world’s attention, but to the Lord was of great importance?  Was He showing favor to His people, Israel, today in the midst of our modern world?

We knew the new nation had been created, but here was Scriptural insight into what the Lord thought of the event. I was in awe as my mind flashed back to mother’s words: “Maybe that’s what the prophets meant!”

The following two Scriptures give us further insights into this “appointed time.” Jesus, in His prophetic description of the history we have just studied, tells us: “Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” (Luke 21:24) Paul echoes this: “Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in.” (Romans 11:25)

With Israel’s birth, a seismic shift occurred in the heavenly realm and in the world. And many – even much of the Church with its rich depository of Scriptural truth – missed it.

How comparable to the way the world missed our Savior’s birth, which was ushered in by the great angelic pronouncement. The sky was ablaze with heavenly light for the Bethlehem shepherds. And the sleeping world yawned.

So it was also with Israel’s inception as a nation. Few understood or were even aware of God’s dramatic invasion into history. But the process had begun. For indeed, the “Lord hears the needy and does not despise his captive people. …for God will save Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah.” (Psalm 69:33 & 35) And that is exactly what has been happening since 1948.

Day 7 of God Keeps Covenant: World War II and the Holocaust

In the summer of 2004, as I walked for the first time through Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, what struck me most deeply was the Jewish suffering after World War II. My heart was broken not only by the gas chambers and crematoriums (which I had known about) but also by the post-war holding camps in Cyprus and northern Europe, where conditions were not much better than at Auschwitz. I wept as I thought of the survivors of the Holocaust finally landing in Haifa, Israel, only to be sent back to the holding camps because of anti-Semitic regulations.

But I don’t intend here to dwell on the horrors. If you have seen “Schindler’s List,” “Playing for Time” or “The Pianist,” you know very well the appalling scenes from the Warsaw ghetto and the death camps.

Instead, let us zero in on a small Bible College in Wales where nightly, powerful prayer meetings were occurring during the war. Rees Howells, an intercessor God had groomed with great care, would take time by himself to wait on the Lord for the prayer strategy for a particular evening.

Once he had heard the Lord’s direction, he would join others already in prayer and together they would go into deep intercession – perhaps for hours – until they sensed they had “broken through” and the Lord had achieved what He desired. Often within days the news would report a victory the Allies had needed to press on to defeat the evil Nazi regime – exactly as they had prayed.

O yes, there were prayer gatherings everywhere as the world writhed convulsively during those awful years between 1939-1945. Finally those regimes fell, and the senseless murder ceased for those whose only crime was that they were Jewish.

Can we ever answer the question “Why?” In today’s world, innocent people, children, and babies are being murdered almost daily by terrorists. We all wrestle with why evil has to be so powerful. The answers will come when we see the Lord face to face.

Then, we will have the kind of history lesson those two disciples had on the road to Emmaus on Resurrection Day when the Lord Jesus brought His gruesome death and the prophetic Word together for them. (Luke 24) Until that day, I have to trust my Lord. In His Sovereignty, the Lord had to allow the Holocaust. The outcome was a homeland for the Jewish people – the restored nation of Israel. He used the incredible tragedy for His purposes.

To return to our opening Scripture, we see that intercessors did call on the Lord and gave themselves and Him no rest during those terrible years. Through the horrors, the Lord somehow caused His Will to be done to bring closer the Day He “establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth.”