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.”

Day 6 of God Keeps Covenant: Christians Who Cared.

Dr. Michael Brown has written a powerful book entitled Our Hands Are Stained with Blood – The Tragic Story of the “Church” and the Jewish People. In the midst of recounting the horrific mistreatment of Jews, Dr. Brown gives us a wonderful chapter entitled, “A Blessed and Beautiful Stream,” in which he acquaints the reader with a few of those who have stood out in history against this tide of anti-Semitic evil.

Of course many of these believers were the quiet ones who remained in obscurity. They were those who cried out to God in prayer for the Jewish people or who performed secret acts of kindness despite the personal danger. We know that many of these “righteous Gentiles,” (as the Jewish people call Christians who care for them) gave their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. Corrie ten Boom’s family is one of the best-known examples (as depicted in the book and movie, The Hiding Place.)

Interestingly, many of the Puritans who shaped early America had a vision for Israel and held the hope that the Jewish people would return to their land and their Lord. Perhaps one of the reasons God has so blessed America has been the fact that many times through the years we have opened our arms to Jewish people fleeing the persecutions of Europe.

Samuel Rutherford, a famous Scottish Puritan, had a deep love for the Lord and His ancient people. I love this description from one of his letters quoted in Dr. Brown’s book:

O to see the sight, next to Christ’s Coming in the clouds, the most joyful! Our elder brother the Jews and Christ fall upon one another’s neck… They have been long asunder; … O longed-for and lovely day-dawn! …let me see that sight which will be as life from the dead, Thee and Thy ancient people in mutual embraces. (2)

In the early 1800s, the London Jews Society was formed. This organization encouraged Jews to immigrate to Israel and also established the first Protestant Jewish Church there. They opened schools and a hospital. The result was that, for the first time in 1,700 years, there were known to be Jewish people in Israel who came to believe in Jesus as the Messiah. During the intense persecutions in Russia in the 1880s, the London Jews Society helped the first Russian immigrants “home” to Israel.

Even Queen Victoria, who reigned on the British throne for more than 50 years in the last half of the 1800s, strongly supported a homeland for the Jewish people.

In today’s Scripture from Isaiah, whom is the Lord addressing? Could it be that He is actually stirring all of us in the Church to “comfort” His chosen people? I believe so!

Day 5 of God Keeps Covenant: A Look Into History.

A devotional may seem to be a strange place to discuss history. Sadly however, many in the Church today have no idea how much persecution has been inflicted on the Jewish people in the name of Christ. So our key Scripture for today is Paul’s warning resounding down through the centuries to all who will hear: “Do not be arrogant.” Regrettably, many have ignored Paul’s plea.

The apostles were scarcely in their graves when key leaders in the early church began turning against the Jews. By the time Christianity became accepted throughout the Roman Empire, every vestige of Jewishness had been erased from the Church. Jewish people who became Christians were forbidden to keep Saturday as the Sabbath, or to celebrate the feasts commanded by the Lord through Moses.

Expulsion, forced conversion and violence mar the pages of the history of Christian Europe as the separation between Christian and Jew continued to widen. Even many of the holiest and most respected church fathers were virulently anti-Semitic. (1)

The Crusades, between 1000 and 1200 AD, became an excuse to eradicate as many Jews as possible as fanatic knights and their followers rampaged through cities and towns on their way to the Holy Land. Once in Jerusalem, these men, convinced they were doing God’s will, slaughtered Jews as well as Muslims until the blood literally ran through the streets.

In Europe in the late 1200s, a story circulated widely that Jews were kidnapping Christian children, slaughtering them, drinking their blood and using it to make their Passover bread. Untold thousands of Jewish people lost their lives in the ensuing centuries because of this preposterous lie. These accusations continued in Eastern Europe well into the last century and still surface today in Muslim countries. How difficult this is to comprehend!

Down through the centuries, persecutions and mass expulsions took place in England, France, Spain, Russia and Eastern Europe. Between 1440 and 1808, 30,000 Jews were burned at the stake in Spain and thousands more in Portugal and Mexico.

Even Martin Luther (1500s) in his later years joined the ranks of those who vilified the Jews and desired their destruction.  It has been said that Luther’s angry outbursts against them helped Hitler justify his purges and death camps.

 It is estimated that in the centuries before the Holocaust 7,000,000 Jewish people were slaughtered by those confessing to be Christians. Then during World War II another 6,000,000 were annihilated.

Where was the Lord in all those centuries of suffering? I believe He was weeping with His people. “In all their affliction He was afflicted.” (Isaiah 63:9 NKJV) He was also weeping over His Church. He had left such clear instructions to love.