Most parents who have more than one child have a special affection for their first child. That’s the one they first doted on, the one they took thousands of photos framing his every move, the one they wanted to make perfect to face the world, the one they planned their lives around, the one they pinned their hopes to, and so forth.
Does God feel the same way about His first son?
Then you shall say to Pharaoh, “Thus says the LORD, Israel is my firstborn son.” (Exodus 4:22)
Israel is certainly not Jesus, but it is the nation that God chose to place His first son status upon. This means that Israel receives a double portion of inheritance as compared to other nations.
Now, lest other nations get jealous about Israel receiving a double portion of blessings, Israel also receives a double portion of judgments, chastisements, rebukes, and corrections to prepare it for its destiny in God’s eternal plans.
My prayer today:
Lord, help American Christians to stand in faith for Israel in the days ahead, whether the nation is walking with God or in total rebellion, believing that You are able to bring Israel into the fulfillment of all Your promises for the nation.
What do you think and has the Lord spoken to you today?
Join with me on Tuesdays to fast and pray for Israel and Jerusalem.
If we don’t think about heaven rightly, we won’t think about it at all. (Mike Bickle)
Many Christians who are my age are pulling the plug and slowing down, taking it easy, enjoying their silver-haired years, resting on what they have done with their lives, and hoping that’s good enough. They believe it’s too late to put the pedal to the metal and keep charging forward in seeking the kingdom of God.
That’s not my thinking!
Yes, my 72-year old knees may be creaky and other parts may take a while to warm up in the mornings, but I still have breath in my lungs and a beating heart. So, instead of slowing down, I plan on picking up the pace because I’m not satisfied with what I have done with my life so far.
Why?
Over the last eight to nine months, I have devoted most of my time to studying the End-Times, the Great Tribulation, and the upcoming thousand-year (Millennium) reign of Christ here on earth.
This studying has opened my eyes to the realization that our 70 to 80 years of life here on the earth in our physical bodies are basically internships, preparing us for our roles in the Millennium with Christ and for His eternal kingdom afterward.
How many of us would advise our children or grandchildren to slack off before a final examination? None of us, right? We would urge them to work hard right up to the last moment.
Do you realize we have a final examination date awaiting us sometime in the future? It’s called the Judgment Seat of Christ. This is where we’ll learn how our qualifications stack up in His eyes and what roles we’ll have in Christ’s reign on earth.
Maybe you don’t care because you think you’ll just be sitting on a cloud strumming a harp and praising the Lord for billions of years.
If this is your thinking, you need to read the upcoming parts to at least consider that you might be wrong.
But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9)
The American church has more than enough critics pointing their fingers at its problems. From feminists to LGBT individuals to racial activists to homeless communities to doctrinal purists to politicians to whomever – all seem to have a bone to pick with the American church.
Here’s my challenge to every critic: are you willing to be a part of the solution? Or do you just want to keep throwing rocks?
You see, change will only happen when critics, like you and me, have a revelation of what the American church should be: the Bride of Christ. If we can just get a small glimpse of what this Bride should look like, we would fall in love with her. Then, we’d do whatever we had to do to bring the Bride into her fulfillment.
My prayer today:
Lord, help us. We believers are being tossed about by every wave of criticism, by the trickery of men, and by deceit, but if You would reveal a glimpse to us of Your Bride without any spots or wrinkles or blemishes, in all her holiness and without fault, we would use our revelations as lighthouses to draw us toward her. (Based on Ephesians 4 and Ephesians 5:27)
What do you think and has the Lord spoken to you today?
Join with me on Thursdays to fast and pray for America.
The main storyline of the Bible from the book of Genesis to the book of Revelation revolves around the nation of Israel and God’s covenant people – the Jews. There are side narratives, allowing Gentiles to be grafted into the main storyline, which believers like me are thankful for. Yet even so, the Apostle Paul warns Gentiles not to think of ourselves as being superior to the Jews, but to be grateful and to fear God. Paul also states that the calling of God on Israel is irrevocable. (China and Israel: My End-Times Teachers)
If we believe we’re in the last days, then we need to start praying and interceding for Israel. As John Wesley wrote: “God does nothing except through prayer.”
My prayer today:
Lord, give us Your love and zeal for Israel and Jerusalem. Help us to open our mouths to defend and to pray for them until Your righteousness and salvation is fulfilled in their midst. (Based on Isaiah 62:1)
What do you think and has the Lord spoken to you today?
Join with me on Tuesdays to fast and pray for Israel and Jerusalem.
Once again, it’s time to hear from our sister in Jerusalem about what she is witnessing there as a believer in Yeshua. Put your prayer shawls on and pray for Israel and Sister J. Now here she is —
To HIM Who is Wonderful, Counselor, Almighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace, The Creator. TO HIM be all glory and may HE be blessed. May you all be encouraged and blessed and know that you are loved.
GREETINGS!
How incredibly thankful I am that I know Him Who never changes and can’t be moved, because everything around us changes so rapidly and all that can shake surely is being shaken. Although I do know that some of you get all sorts of reports and know quite well what is happening here, I also know that MANY others of you have told me that you hear nothing and would like to know, so for this second group, I will share some of the things going on as I see it at the end of this letter perhaps…
BUT!
This letter is more to share the path that I am walking and the fruit along the way. It’s just how wonderful how He can open surprise doors and streams in the desert…and I get to share with you, not one, but TWO such opportunities to rejoice. NOT to rejoice in me for getting the opportunities, but in the fact that HE does such marvelous things.
So, my hand hurts. No, actually it’s been “killing me big time” for about 2 months. And it’s my right hand, the one that I use all the time for everything. Suddenly it really hurt to write, to cut veggies, to do dishes, and forget opening bottles.
My tea cup fell from my hand. The pain went right up through my elbow and shoulder and I kept thinking that it would either go away or well, maybe you know, the body is getting older and things sometimes hurt. Kudos to you who ALWAYS get healed. I have had miraculous healings. Some very dramatic, and my GOD DOES HEAL, but He also is Truth and the truth is that it hurt and wasn’t healed yet.
My doctor sent me to our health fund’s occupational therapist. (In Hebrew that is ‘rapooie h’eesook’ רפוי בעסוק.) I was unfamiliar with this service and was pleasantly surprised to spend an hour with one fun lady from Canada who soaked my hand in hot wax. She made me a brace that fits and has helped wonderfully.
Of course, we talked about where we came from and why and although I lifted it before The Lord, there was no opening that I found to share there as yet.
BUT OUTSIDE WAS THE SECRETARY! She was a lovely sabra (native born Israeli) with many of the characteristics of a sabra that I have shared before. She was DIRECT. There just is NO TIME for beating around the bush with her. But it was a funny conversation that went something like this when I tried to make my next appointment:
“OH! You speak Hebrew? I heard you speaking English. Why were you speaking English?” she demanded.
I told her, “Well Ruthie is from Canada and English is our mother tongue so it was easy for both of us.”
That was only a door. She continued, “She’s been here 30 years and you speak better than she does!”
NOT! I thought, but thank you.
Then the clincher – “Where do you come from?” she asked.
When she heard, me say, “Alaska,” she lost it.
“ALASKA? WHERE IS THAT? ISN’T IT COLD THERE?”
“It’s pretty there,” I replied.
“WHY DID YOU COME HERE? WE HAVE SO MUCH STRESS!” she exclaimed.
The more of my story that I shared the more she shot questions at me, especially when she heard that my Husband is not Jewish.
“We HAVE to be here! We are Jewish and we have no choice but WHY IN THE WORLD would anyone who doesn’t have to be here be here?”
Oh my she was intrigued and quite demonstrative about it all.
“Well, you know that it is written in Yeshi’aho (Isaiah) that we Jews will be brought home from the ends of the earth and someone had to come from there. So it is us,”I told her.
To my amazement her answer was: “Well at least did you bring Messiah with you?”
Let that question settle a moment. I didn’t HAVE a moment as she continued to shoot questions.
I answered “Yes…as a matter of fact…yes I did.”
But she didn’t take notice of my answer and I’m glad. Perhaps because I don’t think that she was ready to hear the full answer but I have her to pray for now. That her heart would be prepared and that HE would remove the scales.
For me though, it was enough to excite me by way of memory that I MUST be ready in season and out of season to give an answer to those who ask. And perhaps that prepared me for today’s encounter with Kinneret, the secretary along side of me who works for the other doctor. She is the one who replaced Mali. I have asked you to pray for her before, so perhaps He is answering YOUR prayers?
Kinneret, the mother of 5, has a heart-wrenching story. I shared some of it 5 months ago when she began working with me, but have learned more since. Her 16 year-old twins have mental problems. Perhaps you remember that her mother has been in a mental hospital since Kinneret was about 5. She is schizophrenic and Kinneret has the dark fear that she has passed the genes down to her children.
Now her son (twin) who has not left the house in a year says that he is homosexual and so ashamed that he wants to die. As she tearfully shared these griefs with me, how she tries so hard and nothing she puts her hand to succeeds, she has such a broken heart and so much fear. AND she is religious, an orthodox woman.
SUDDENLY The Holy Spirit said, “NOW! SHARE MY NAME WITH HER NOW!‘
“YES LORD!’”
And so I did. With not enough Hebrew (she speaks no English), there at work, with work to do, but through the door that He was opening, I shared what I could. I shared how He came to me and how He changed me, NOT by works that I did but by coming IN and living inside of me and bringing me His peace. She wept and listened and asked some questions. We spoke for about an hour.
Will you pray for her and her family? Will you pray for HIM ALONE TO BE SEEN AND GLORIFIED?
Yesterday we heard a wonderful message in kehila reminding us about WHO IT IS to Whom we pray and WHO it Is Who leads us through the wilderness, where we grumble for meat when He has given us manna, where we accuse Him of bringing us to death when He is bringing us to LIFE. And just when you least expect it, HE appears.
And opens a door or two.
Very briefly, an opinion from your sister-of-NO-expertise.
Times are changing here. Even the silence is different. SOMETHING is happening and Iran is involved. When the intense rocket fire of last week ended suddenly with a ceasefire that Hamas declared, I thought, “Huh…I don’t think so….”
Friday we were back to “from the river to the sea we are taking back the land,” along with the fires being set by the kites loaded with incendiaries and then again last night we had more rockets from Gaza into S. Israel.
By the way, the rockets and mortars that we have retrieved were made in Iran. On our North there has been much tension, and yes, the weather has been mighty strange.
BUT!! OUR GOD IS! And OUR GOD IS WHOM WE FOLLOW WHEREVER HE LEADS IS WHERE I WANT TO BE.
THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR PRAYERS FOR HIS PURPOSES AND HEART FOR JERUSALEM AND ISRAEL AND FOR OUR FAMILY.
My new weekly column entitled, “Are Demons Responsible for Inner City Violence,” can be read by clicking here.
If you have an iPhone or iPad, you can perhaps read it better by using the Chrome browser rather than Safari. Also, you can go to the app store and download a free app called: WND.
In it, my wife Carol and I were attending a church meeting. I sat in the front row of the sanctuary, next to the church’s pastor on my left and Carol to my right. The whole church was waiting on the Holy Spirit, hoping to hear Him speak to the assembly through prophecy.
All of a sudden, my wife spoke in tongues. I waited a moment to see if one of the pastors or another believer would interpret the tongues. Then, I started to interpret her tongues by saying, “The day of the Lord is coming quickly. Are you prepared…”
I continued speaking the interpretation until I felt my wife’s elbow hitting my ribs. My eyes must have been closed because I opened them to look at her, wondering why she had elbowed me. She rolled her eyes and nodded her head toward the sanctuary. Everyone had stood up and left. A few remained at the back of the sanctuary talking with each other.
End of dream.
Many of my dreams are weird, but this one felt so realistic.
When I awakened, I felt hurt because the pastor was one I knew from my past, a person who had respect for my prophetic words. Yet, the pastor and the congregation had paid no attention to my words because the prophecy was about the end-times and challenged them to prepare themselves. They already had everything figured out. They were leaving on the first bus out, as in Pre-Trib rapture.
Then, I knew the Holy Spirit was showing me through this dream that changing the church’s thinking from a Pre-Tribulation rapture belief into one that prepares itself for going through the great tribulation would be an uphill struggle. I had better prepare myself now!
My prayer today:
Lord, I pray the American believers will hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches and will be fair-minded like the Bereans so they search the scriptures to find out whether a Post-Tribulation rapture could possibly be true. (Based on Revelation 2:7 and Acts 17:11)
What do you think and has the Lord spoken to you today?
Join with me on Thursdays to fast and pray for America.
My new weekly column entitled, “China and Israel: My End-Times Teachers,” can be read by clicking here.
If you have an iPhone or iPad, you can perhaps read it better by using the Chrome browser rather than Safari. Also, you can go to the app store and download a free app called: WND.
I know that it is perhaps too soon since my last letter, but I did want to share what I have seen and heard while it is yet fresh in my heart. May you be encouraged and blessed and may THE LORD alone be glorified and edified!
“for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it”. MATTHEW 13:17
I suspected that Israel turning 70 would be dramatic even though I am always amazed when I walk around Jerusalem. The city is a clear example of The Lord’s ability and faithfulness to fulfill His own promises.
The grieving that I began to describe in the letter that I sent you on Remembrance Day, seemed deeper this year. How was that possible? It is terribly deep EVERY year. As I watched films and saw photos of soldiers and families, it hit me afresh that not one picture was taken on foreign soil but all HERE…in our neighborhoods, around the corner and down the block in this very tiny country…because these, our sons and daughters, husbands and wives really are defending the land that is in front of their houses, our houses. I
It is all so personal and all so in your face ALL the time. There are no faceless people, even though the population of the country is approaching 9 million. They are daily on the train with me. Many are soldiers whom I laugh with and pray for and whose packs I trip over as it is strewn in the aisle. I tell a sleepy soldier to mind his bullets as they are slipping out, or another that his phone is ringing.
But then it happened: the crowds gravitated back to Har Herzl (Mount Herzl). Streams flowing into rivers and then becoming an ocean of people. I watched and then turned on the television. I like to watch the ceremony (“tekes” in Hebrew). It is truly like having a finger on the pulse of a patient. It is only in Hebrew and I can understand much of it, and so it means a lot to me.
Always it seems as though it is IMPOSSIBLE to go in a hair’s breadth from deep and real mourning into rejoicing, but now I have come to expect that they will pull it off, AGAIN. Nevertheless, I lift up a prayer because there is the heart and morale of this people who still do not know Him at stake.
And this is the 70th year!
The Biblical significance of the numbers do not go unnoticed here. Seventy is perfection, completeness, I could go on and on. Most of you know, and this country knows, and seems to me to be looking up with expectation. Everyone is excited. Everyone over 70 remembers…
The ceremonies are opened and the prayers are spoken and embraced. The trumpet sounds its minor notes and moves to the major ones and the flag is raised. The eyes look upward. The ceremonies are intermingled with song, prayer, poems, speeches and a theatrical show in lights and dance. This years was spectacular. The story of our people from the beginning.
How in the world did they do this: turn the stage into Mt. Sinai one minute and a flood of the words of all of the prophets in Hebrew in the next? Drones flew over adding displays to the sky.
But it is NOT the ceremony – dramatic and emotional though it was – that I want to describe to and share with you. Not the speeches that moved the heart and inspired and brought tears again and again: Not the memories that reminded us that THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE, BUT IT IS!
Let me share with you a few things that turned my head.
I am moved by our national anthem, HaTikvah. I waited for it at the end of the ceremonies and there in my living room alone when it began I stood to my feet to sing http://www.hebrewsongs.com/?song=hatikva . When it ended, I turned off the television to go out into the streets and I STILL heard HaTikvah being sung loudly.
I checked the TV and radio and they were off. So I went out onto my merepesset and there across, the street and spilling over into the street and all around, hundreds of people stood straight and tall singing with one voice raised spontaneously. “Eretz zion, vey Yerushaleyem…”
It was one of those defining those moments! A moment of deep deep transported emotion, transported into the full knowing that INDEED GOD IS DOING THIS.
And you might roll your eyes at that statement, thinking it is just fleshly emotion, if you did not KNOW The Word and He Who gave The Word and made the promises, but I know that I am speaking to people who have also read and been quickened by The Holy Spirit to KNOW that GOD IS FULFILLING HIS WORD. GOD IS BRINGING HIS PEOPLE BACK TO REVEAL HIMSELF for the last days HAVE been written about and…well…here we are!
At work yesterday, each patient shared about their day and their wonder at it all. I asked people and heard many stories. Twice I was in for a personal shock. Tova told me that she was a baby in 1948 when her family arrived from Romania. They went to Jerusalem which was shortly besieged by Arab armies, and there was no food.
She told me about being a small child in war and starvation and then she said, “I am sure that we would have starved to death except for these things: care packages. They kept us alive.”
I began to shake. Do you know how the stirring of a childhood memory can cause you to shake? Perhaps it just touches something so tender but there I was shaking. “Tova, I was born in NYC in 1946 and brought home EVERY DAY from the time that I was in kindergarten. We would pack those care packages with our own hands. I brought around a can to my neighbors and said, ‘Pennies for Israel!’ And yes Tova, I DO know about those boxes. My young heart really DID care as we packed them!”
We stared at each other and hugged with tears. What a strangely intense moment.
A little later I was sharing that experience with Binyamin and Sylvia. They are in their 80s and 90s and seemed like typical New Yorkers to me so it never occurred to me that perhaps they had immigrated first to the US as children. But they had, from the war. And it startled me when Binyamin started recounting the awful times that this world has seen and referred to the great depression.
I had always heard about it from my parents who grew up in it and were greatly impacted by it, but it always seemed to me as if the war overshadowed even that. Suddenly Binyamin explained something I never understood before. “You know, there was NO FOOD in THE WORLD! Do you realize that we lost our 6 million, but 42 million people died in the war. The earth was scorched. There was no one to farm the land that wasn’t burned and there were no farmers. The animals had no food and died. The factories were burned and gone. THERE WAS NO FOOD EXCEPT IN AMERICA!”
Growing up in America, if I had learned about that I didn’t understand it fully. It never hit me, but it DID hit me that moment as I watched him describe the world wide hunger and starvation after the war. And again I shook. “THANK YOU LORD FOR OUR DAILY BREAD.”
I have one more vivid experience to share before sending this and running off into a way too busy day:
We, once again, joined our kehila (congregation) at the home of dear brother and sister who live in the hills above Modi’en to share barbeque (‘mangel’ in Hebrew) fellowship, song, and testimony. As we left, one of the young soldiers asked for a ride back to Latrune where he was meeting other believing soldiers. Happily we took him and as we stopped at the bus stop in Latrune to let him off, a young woman at the bus stop, tanned and sporting a huge backpack, ran up and asked if we were going to Jerusalem and if she could have a ride. As the door swung open to let her in, a second young woman with several backpacks ran up and asked the same question. This one in accented English, so we took her as well.
As we asked each one about themselves and how their celebration had been, the second one took over. She did not speak Hebrew as she was a 19-year old German tourist from Berlin who did not know WHY she came to Israel. “Probably for the weather.”
My husband asked her if this had been her first Passover and she burst out, “Oh YES! Do you KNOW that they don’t eat bread for a whole week? I have never heard of such a thing! It was awful! AND they have this thing called Shabbat when the buses do not run. Amazing!”
I asked her, “Have you ever read the Bible? All of these things are written about in there.”
She laughed, “Oh no! I have never even seen one but I will likely read one now, after the Quran, of course! They have some interesting stories I hear…”
We did not have much time, but I admit to being shocked that this German girl from Berlin knew nothing about the Jews. I thought that the Holocaust was taught extensively in Germany and assumed that the basics of who the Jews were would also be understood. And this young woman had never even SEEN a Bible…
HOW QUICKLY I FORGOT MY OWN IGNORANCE! How can I be truly thankful until I remember how MUCH GOD HAS TAUGHT ME AND the way that HE has lead me in my ignorance.
AND YET HE CONTINUES TO LEADS. (IF we will let Him). You, me, this nation and yours. May we glorify HIM and may this, our 70th year be the year of revelation and of revival.
My new weekly column entitled, “LGBT Battle: Why Isn’t God Helping Christians,”can be read by clicking here.
If you have an iPhone or iPad, you can perhaps read it better by using the Chrome browser rather than Safari. Also, you can go to the app store and download a free app called: WND.
Larry Who 
Are Demons Responsible for Inner City Violence?
My new weekly column entitled, “Are Demons Responsible for Inner City Violence,” can be read by clicking here.
If you have an iPhone or iPad, you can perhaps read it better by using the Chrome browser rather than Safari. Also, you can go to the app store and download a free app called: WND.
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