Episode Transcript
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<p>You're listening to a podcast by Lance Lambert Ministries. For more information on this ministry, visit lancelambert.org and follow us on Telegram to receive all of our updates. Hey there. Welcome. We're continuing this week in the theme of Israel. This episode is a message that Lance gave in 1986 the year that Israel turned 40 years old. He explains the different views of the significance of the number 40 in the Bible and his own opinion about what that means. Even though Israel is currently over 70 years old, this message is still relevant to us today. Let's listen. I would like to read just a few verses that are very well known to you in the 11th chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans. Romans chapter 11. I'm just going to read a few verses here from verse</p>
<cite>11:</cite>
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<p>I say then, Did they [the Jewish people] stumble that they might fall?</p>
<cite>God forbid:</cite>
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<p>but by their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, to provoke them to jealousy. Now if their fall is the riches of the world, and their loss the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness?</p>
<cite>Verse 15:</cite>
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<p>For if the casting away of them is the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?</p>
<cite>Verse 24:</cite>
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<p>For if thou wast cut out of that which is by nature a wild olive tree, and wast grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree, how much more shall these, which are the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree? For I would not, brethren, have you ignorant of this mystery, lest ye be wise in your own conceits, that a hardening in part hath befallen Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in; and so all Israel shall be saved: even as it is written, There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer; He shall turn away</p>
<cite>ungodliness from Jacob:</cite>
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<p>And this is my covenant unto them, When I shall take away their sins. As touching the gospel, they are enemies for your sake: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sake. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For as ye in time past were disobedient to God, but now have obtained mercy by their disobedience, even so have these also now been disobedient, that by the mercy shown to you they also may now obtain mercy. For God hath shut up all unto disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all.</p>
<cite>Just a word of prayer:</cite>
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<p>Father, as we are here in your presence and have felt in a very especial way that your spirit has been upon us and amongst us this evening. As we come to your word, we just want to recognize before you that, apart from that anointing which you've provided, there will be no eternal value in the ministry of your word. Lord, I can say so many things, outline truths, give sound doctrine, we can hear many words, we can hear the truths, but Lord, unless you are the anointing, both of the speaking and the hearing, it will all be to no avail. Lord, we stand by faith into that anointing for both the speaking and the hearing that you may be enabled to fulfil your full purpose for this time this evening. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. I was asked to speak on the subject this evening of Israel's coming of age, her 40th birthday. It is a quite remarkable subject, and because I'd like to see if I can say everything that I have to say and let out the people from Colchester as I finish, rather than them all pour out through it, I shall not bother with much introduction. You all know that Israel has reached her 40th anniversary. On the 14th of May, 1948, the miracle happened and the Jewish state was recreated sovereign, free, independent. That was 40 years ago this coming April. Now you of course are thinking of May the 14th, but by Jewish reckoning, it is April the 21st. However, you are all gonna have your celebrations I understand on the 14th. In the same way, the Jewish year has just begun, the year of 5,748. And this is in fact the beginning of the 40th year of Israel. Now the figure 40 has very real significance in the Bible. In fact, all numbers have significant content as far as the Bible's concerned. I won't go into all of it now, but every number has a symbolic equivalent in scripture and 40 is no exception. You will remember that it rained for 40 days and 40 nights. If I remember there was something like 40 months at the very end of the flood. You will remember that Moses' life was divided into three periods of 40. You will remember he was 40 years in the wilderness being trained and prepared by God for his final ministry of leading the nation out of Egypt and to the promised land. You will remember that the whole generation that came out of Egypt was in the wilderness for 40 years and died in the wilderness, and only the new generation went over into the land led by Joshua and Caleb. You will remember that Elijah took 40 days and 40 nights when he fled from Jezebel and went to Mount Horeb in the Southern part of Sinai. You will also remember that when Moses went up to receive the tablets of stone, he was 40 days and 40 nights up in the mountain with God. This figure 40 comes all the way through the word of God. Jesus himself was tempted of the devil in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights. So we find it everywhere in scripture. And there are also multiples of 40. Israel was in Egypt for 400 years. And so we can go on and go on. And normally it is understood that the figure 40 in the Bible is connected with tribulation, testing and trial. And that's probably correct if you think of all that we've mentioned, then it's about right. And so now Israel is 40 years of age. What does this signify? Does it have any significance or is it just that she is 40 years old? 41 years ago, it is amazing to think about it, there was no Israel. Only 41 years ago there was no Jewish president, no Jewish prime minister, no Jewish parliament, no Jewish army, air force or navy, no Jewish police force. There was no Jewish state. It didn't exist. Today, everybody knows that Israel is in existence. Now, if you look at a map, a normal map, a good map, you will have difficulty in finding Israel. She is so small that you have to know roughly where she is to be able to find her. And yet this little nation of four and a half million people in a postage stamp of territory, the size of the principality of Wales, smaller than Portugal, the same size of the state of Indiana in the United States, about the size of the north island of New Zealand, about a little smaller than Tasmania in Australia, and even smaller than the Kruger national game reserve park in South Africa, this little posted stamp of territory with four and a half million people, everybody has heard of her. The Eskimos have heard of her. The Lapps have heard of her. The [unintelligible] have heard of her. The Mongols have heard of her. Everybody, everywhere for good or for bad has heard of this little state of Israel with its four and a half million population. The amazing thing is that the prophets said that there would come a day when this state would arise again. And furthermore, they prophesied not once, but again and again, that Jerusalem, its status, its future would be the cause and focal point of war. Zechariah, for instance, repeatedly says in his prophecies, "and all the nations of the earth will be gathered together to battle against Jerusalem". Who could have possibly understood such prophecies a hundred years ago? I mean, Jerusalem was a half ruined, unhygienic, flea-bitten, fly-blown town, half asleep, living on its past in the Judean hill country in the Syrian province of the Ottoman empire. It had a population of 40,000 people in 1887. Now who in the world could understand Zechariah's prophecies or the prophecies of some of the other prophets that said all the nations will be gathered together against Jerusalem to battle. What would they have wanted to come against such a sleepy little place? There was nothing there! It wasn't the capital of anything. It had no great empire that it was the hub of. So why should the whole world come in battle against it? Even 45 years ago in the middle of the second world war you would've had to have had a very real gift of living faith to have believed that all the nations would be gathered together against Jerusalem. In 1942 in the middle of the second world war, you could have understood the nations being gathered together in battle against Paris, or London, or Berlin, or Rome, or Moscow, or even Washington, or Peking, but why Jerusalem? What in the world would they come against Jerusalem for? But tonight, everybody knows that there could be a war beginning tonight and within a few days there could be units and battalions from many, many nations from the north, from the south, from the east and the west. Everybody knows who has any understanding of world politics that Jerusalem and Israel could be theflash point of a third world war. That's why the United Nations spends an inordinate amount of its time, debating Israel and in particular the status of Jerusalem. That's why it has passed resolution after resolution on it. That's why in all the capitals of Europe, and indeed of the Marxist world as well, they are always discussing Jerusalem and its status. Everybody knows it could be the flashpoint of an enormous confrontation into which the superpowers could be dragged with terrible and catastrophic results. Yet, 41 years ago, only 41 years ago, there was no Israel, and Jerusalem was not the capital of that state. Today, everyone knows about it. Cities have been rebuilt on the ancient ruins. The land has been reclaimed. There is a viable economy. And there have been five wars in 40 years, three of which should have been the annihilation of that state, but every one of those wars has ended not in the mere survival of Israel, but in its triumph. Now I would've thought that God was saying something. I would've thought that if we looked at the prophecies in the word of God, whether in the Old Testament or the New Testament and we put them alongside the evidence of what is happening in our own day and generation, I would've said that God must be saying something to the church, to the nations of the world and to the Jewish people. I can hardly believe that God is fulfilling all these ancient prophecies simply for the sake of accuracy. I can hardly believe that all he's doing it for is a kind of an object lesson for the church at large. To go to all this trouble to fulfill these ancient prophecies surely points to some divine destiny for this people in which the church is intimately and centrally involved. Now I'm talking of course about the true church. Those who are born of God. So as I see it, this 40th year must be significant. I mean, Israel has gone through a period of colossal testing on every level, and trial. However, we look at it, this year must mark a new phase in God's dealings with Israel and with the Jewish people and therefore with the nations. Now there are different views of this new phase, this new period beginning with the 40th year. Most of those who love Israel and understand Israel to some degree, believe that a new phase has begun. There are different views and the different views have variations. And I only want to take two main ones and just outline them and then say somethings as to my understanding of it for what it's worth. One view is that the period of war and suffering and affliction and alienation of Israel is over. Israel is now going to move into a period of expansion, a period of prosperity, a period of establishment, a period of very great blessing. This is one view. I've heard it expressed in a number of quarters of those who love Israel, and pray for Israel, and understand Israel. There are of course a number of variations on this view, but I'm just giving you the main one in this. Then there is a quite opposite view, and that is that Israel has failed in the 40 years and is facing a Holocaust. This, believe it or believe it not, is the view of Rabbi Meir Kahane. He says that these 40 years are very significant. God has put his Israel to the test concerning his word, concerning faithfulness to him, concerning walking in his ways, and concerning possessing the land, and they have failed. And he [Rabbi Kahane] was saying two or three years back that if something does not happen in Israel in the next few years, then we are going to face a Holocaust. He calls it the new Holocaust. Now there are others who also believe something of the same. That's the exact opposite view of the other. And of course there are variations. My own understanding is this. I believe there is much more war and much more suffering ahead of Israel. I do not believe that we are entering a period when it will all be peace and prosperity without war. I think that there will be more war. If I understand my Bible correctly, I cannot understand the future, the immediate future of Israel without war and without trouble. And that seems to me to be perfectly clear, for instance, from Ezekiel 38 and 39 and from a number of other passages. Even Zechariah chapter 12 suggests exactly the same thing. That there is more war and more trouble coming to Israel. So I personally cannot accept that we are moving into a period without any more war and suffering. However, on the other side, I would not be the least bit unsure that a new phase has begun in which Israel will know very real establishment. In the midst of war and in the midst of suffering, but in an all together deeper and fuller way than she has ever known before. And in particular one area, which in my estimation is the most vital area of all, and is perhaps the matter that lies most heavily on the heart of God. That is the salvation of the Jewish people. I can't help feeling that there will be war and more war and some of them very big. And in every one of those wars, Israel will suffer, but will come out on top. Absolutely triumphant. By God's grace, and by God's deliverances. At the same time, I can believe that certain things will be established as far as the economy is concerned, and as far as the reclaiming of the land is concerned, and as far as the bringing back of more Jewish people to the land is concerned. But the greatest, area of all is the area of salvation. And I can't help feeling that God is cornering Israel step-by-step, stage-by-stage in these different wars. He's stripping her of all her competence in herself, in all her confidence in her ingenuity, in all her confidence in her own capabilities, by bringing up more and more advanced foes, more numerous, more powerful, and far more equipped. That's how I understand the word of God. Now, if that is so then it seems to me that we are moving into one of the most exciting periods in Israel's history. We have passed out of the initial establishment and preservation of the state into the ultimate, as far as God is concerned. Into the dimension of salvation. Now let me just say something more here. I hope I'm not confusing you in any way. I believe that related to this is the recognition of the messianic community as absolutely legitimate. At present, messianic believers are not considered really to be legitimate. They are, in some cases put up with. Others are rejected. But generally speaking, they are considered to be of not legitimate status. I can't help wondering whether we are entering into that phase where the messianic community will be looked upon as a legitimate community in Israel. And I've always felt in my heart that that would be the beginning of the veil being taken away. Now, if there are those of you who really pray and take these things as a burden on your heart, that means that could be one of the most vital and strategic areas to now pray through, that in some way or another, this thing will be finally settled. There are many, I could speak for an hour on the subject of the complexity of this matter. The fact that we've had court cases, high court cases, certain rulings made about what you believe or what you don't believe, whether you've been baptized or you haven't been baptized and who baptized you and who didn't baptize you and all the rest of it. All these things have, in other words, built up a very complex problem. But God is able to blow the whole thing away in one moment and bring about a clear-cut recognition of messianic believers as Jewish and as an integral part of the nation. And that to me, could be one of those areas that the Lord will establish in this new phase that is beginning for Israel. Now, I mentioned in our prayer time this afternoon, that extraordinary solemn convocation that we had. Let me just, again, just go over the details of it without spending too much time on it. In the old days, at the end, the termination of the sabbatical year, which came every seven years. Now, this sabbatical year was a year in which everything lay fallow. Nothing was pruned. Nothing was planted. Nothing was reaped. Nothing was sown. Everything lay fallow for the year. At the termination of that year, after the new year began, during the Feast of Tabernacles, the high priest would call a solemn convocation within the precincts of the temple and the whole nation would come - that is, all the men. The women also, but it was required for the men to be present. The ladies could, or didn't have to, it was up to them. All the men of Israel would appear before the Lord, and the king would read the law from Deuteronomy and then the high priest and the priests would pray that God would forgive the nation, would grant them the gift of repentance, would renew them, turn them toward himself and cause them to walk in his ways. This has never been held since the days of King Josiah. Now that means some 2,500 years have passed by and it has not been held. Then all of a sudden, last year, the chief rabbis got together and they decided it would be good at the end of the Shmita year, the sabbatical year, which ended this September, that during the Feast of Tabernacles, it would be good if they called such a solemn assembly and ask president Chaim Herzog, if he would stand in the place of the king and would read from the scriptures. It was an extraordinary occasion. I've already said about the silver trumpet, the 35,000 people that turned up, the whole of Israel's leadership was there except Shimon Peres. The prime minister acted as the steward to go to the ark, to take the Torah out and bring it over with another cabinet minister. They unraveled it and then, then the president read. Everybody was in on the thing. A most extraordinary time. And then there was the prayer, and it was very moving. The prayer that God would give repentance to the whole nation, that he would forgive the transgressions of the nation and it sins and iniquities, and that he would have mercy upon the whole house of Israel, that he would turn us again as a nation to himself, that he would renew us, and revive us and enable us to walk in his ways. Now I can't help feeling in my spirit that it marked something new, the beginning of something new in the history of Israel. And to me, it seems very significant that at the very beginning of this 40th year, for the first time, the whole nation, at least in its representatives, appealed to God to give the gift of repentance, and to renew the nation and enable us to walk in the ways of the Lord. In the last 40 years, I don't know of any other such official occasion in which that call to God has been made. And I cannot help, but wonder whether, although it only represents a portion of the nation, nevertheless, because the leadership was there and because the leadership humbled itself before God to ask him for forgiveness, and to ask him to renew, and to revive, and to quicken, whether it does not signify a new phase in God's dealings with Israel. That is as I see it. Now, I find this quite exciting, since I'm talking for the most part to those who are intercessors for Israel, and I hope for the rest, those who are potential intercessors for Israel, however young you may be in the Lord. Everywhere I've gone all over the country, I've said to the young people everywhere, don't just leave the old ones to carry this burden of intercession. We need young men to take responsibility before God in this matter, we need young women to start to take responsibility. And if you're only prepared to offer yourself to the Lord, he'll start to train you and qualify you. We need the new generation to take this matter into their hearts. These books that are coming out, these pamphlets that are coming out, these attacks, they seem to be orchestrated somewhere. Even if the brethren do not realize it, there seems to be some edict that's gone out from the powers of darkness, "Confuse the people of God in this whole matter. Bring confusion, bring division, bring false teaching, bring blindness on this matter. Let antisemitism, even if they don't recognize it, come up to the surface and take over". My dear friends, if this should ever happen to the church in Britain, I shudder to think of the consequences. When I think of the German church, there were three stages in the collapse of the German church. The first was when Martin Luther wrote that terrible book in the very last years of his life in 1542-43, entitled, "[On] the Jews and their Lies," in which he described them as verminous, briggands, robbers, filth, and in which he gave as the conclusion, his considered opinions to all who were believers in the Lord Jesus. "Burn down their synagogues," he said, "and bury what remains with earth. Burn their prayer books and their Torah scrolls," which is the word of God. "Burn them! Take their homes and destroy them and let them live in cow sheds and pig sties. Stop their rabbis from traveling, bar them from traveling in the road," and a whole number of other things. That book by Luther, one of the founding fathers of the reformation and of the Lutheran church, was never refuted until a few years ago in the World Lutheran Federation Congress in Goteborg in southern Sweden. All these years it has been accepted. And indeed in the Nazi period, that book of Luther's became official Nazi propaganda, reproduced without editing and without any alteration, exactly as Luther wrote it. It was the first nails in the coffin of the German church. The second was the sudden flood of demonic spirits into the German church, which tore away the Old Testament from German Christians, devaluing it, denigrating it, saying that it was just a blood God that was in the old Testament, who required blood sacrifices. He was a blood-thirsty, tribal deity. "Christians have the new Testament," they said, "this is all-together different. This is a new religion, has nothing to do with the old". They tore away the Old Testament from the German Christians and gave them only a New Testament. Then they got to work on the New Testament, slowly questioning the virgin birth, questioning the atoning death of Jesus, questioning his resurrection and all the rest of it. We call it higher criticism. This was the second nail in the coffin of the German church. And the third was in 1909, when in a great evangelical congress in Germany, they described the work and the gifts of the Holy Spirit as demonic. It was the last nail in the coffin of the German church. When Hitler came to power, not all German Christians, but many German Christians went along with him, hung the swastikas in their churches, had pictures of Adolf Hitler under which they celebrated the Lord's table. It had been a progress. Now, my dear friends, I'm not saying that you would have the same process in the church here. But believe you me, if there ever comes a time when antisemitism raises its head in the church in the British Isles, it will be the end. It is a very interesting thing to me, just as an aside, to notice the difference in the church of Scotland, and the church of England. In the church of Scotland, there's a general thing, "Well, what have we got to do with Jews?" But there's no anti-Jewish feeling at all. Scotland is one of the few areas in the whole of Europe, Scandinavia, and the British Isles that never saw any persecution of the Jews. It is almost unique. And one of the reasons is that the church of Scotland sang the psalms, believed in the Old Testament, and generally speaking, lived in the old Testament. They love the stories of David, there's an identity in many ways with David. But when you come over this side of the border, it's not that there's any anti-Jewish feeling, but it's a supercilious feeling. You know, "Oh, the Jews, well, what have we got to do with the Jews?" You get the feeling - of course, they never say it to me - but you get the feeling that every Jew is a mixture of Fagan and Shylock. It's a kind of unwritten feeling. Well now my dear friends, all I'm just saying is this. It seems to me that we are now in a new phase, as far as Israel is concerned. And with all these pamphlets and books that have come out, and more to come, may I say, we need to be more clear than ever. And you younger people need to take up the torch, not leave it to the old folks, but really begin to ask the Lord for your own vision, your own revelation, your own illumination by the Holy Spirit, so that you understand this matter for the sake of the church in the days that lie ahead. I had not been able to - I'm trying to watch the time - I cannot understand one simple matter. I have recently come back from Asia. It has been my joy to have been twice this last year in Borneo. Many of the people who've turned to the Lord in Borneo are from tribes that were headhunters 50 years ago. The Ibans, the Dayaks, the Muruts and so on. No young man could marry a girl till he bought home a head, a human head severed recently in a string bag, which she then had to inspect to see that it was viral enough and not some 70 or 80 year old. She would then feel able to marry him because he was a man that had brought back the head. These tribes, many of them have turned to the Lord. And recently when I was in a place that I will not mention by name, they had had a large congress in the interior of leaders. And the two top leaders were asked by everybody else to send their wives down to where I was to contact me and to ask if I would be prepared to go sometime into the interior and teach them. What about? About Israel. They said, "We love Israel". This was what these two ladies said when they were introduced to me, "We have come from this congress of leaders representing thousands and thousands of believers in Borneo. We love Israel," they said, "we want you to know we pray for Israel at every one of our meetings!" So my mouth dropped open and I said, "Are you telling me the truth?" And they said, "Yes! Absolutely the truth, but we don't know anything about Israel. We've never met a Jew and we want you to come and teach us." Well, I couldn't go. I said I couldn't go. Then I'd tried to go at another occasion and then came the thunderbolt. These two ladies said, "Well, we have one other matter. We have been collecting money for Jewish orphans and widows, and we want to know how we can get it to Israel." Now, these people were making orphans and widows 50 years ago, and now here I find them without any of the theological sophistry of the west, all these theological shenanigans that go on, that's really, basically antisemitism coming out. These people who haven't got any of that when they are born of God and filled and anointed with the Holy Spirit, have a love in their hearts for the Jewish people in spite of the poison that the media pours out in their country day and night concerning Israel. Then I come back to Singapore and I'm met at the airport by one of the Singapore airline pilots who's a most wonderful believer. And he says, "I hope you're not too tired because we've got somebody in town tonight who's come and wants to meet you, and he's very important, and it's very important that you see him." And I said, "That's okay with me," because when I found out it was Dennis Balcom, I was overjoyed. So we had this meal together and Dennis was telling me all about what's been happening in the church in mainland China. And then he said to me, "It's time for you really to pay a visit. They know you by name, by your Chinese name. You're known everywhere. And it's time now for you to come". He said, "Lance, it doesn't matter what meeting it is. Thousands strong in the rural areas or just five or eight in the cities and towns, everywhere, every meeting, they pray for Israel". Now, you know, there are over 55 million believers now in the mainland of China, the greatest ethnic community of believers in the world. They're nearly all in their late teens and their twenties. They've all been brought up in an atheistic education, a Marxist Milia, and yet they've found the Lord without Bibles and without all the paraphernalia that the church here thinks it's essential to have. It is incredible. And then there was a Romanian pastor with him and this Romanian pastor, because he was Romanian, had been able to travel anywhere he wanted to. If he'd been Russian, he couldn't have done, it or Polish, but because he was a Romanian and Romania had fallen out with the Soviet Union, China quite liked Romania, so he was allowed travel anywhere. He said to, "Absolutely true." he said, and he didn't understand Israel. He said, "Everywhere," he said, "in one big meeting, a thousand people in the country." He said, "I saw this brother stand up, and he cried so much as he prayed that all his gown went wet. And I noticed that all the people around him were praying, so I said that the interpreter, what is he paying about? China?" "No, no," said the interpreter, "Israel". And this was confirmed by another great friend of mine, over 80 years of age, one of the coworkers of brother Watchman Nee, and a most wonderful sister who's had a lifelong love for the Jewish people. She has now recently been able to go back to her home province and her hometown under the new relaxed laws of the Chinese mainland government. And she told me this amazing story on her second visit. She said when she was there, she was in the family home, an old home in Foochow. And she said there was a knocking on the door early in the morning. She heard someone opening it and excitement, and then someone called her, "Ruth, Ruth, come quickly! Brother So-and-So's here." She said, she went out as quickly as she could to see him. She hadn't seen this man for over 40 years since the communists took over. He was another coworker of brother Nee. This man had gone into the highest mountains in that path of China to get away from the persecution and had somehow survived. He had walked two days over two ranges, also in his eighties. And do you know what he said when he opened his mouth? He never said, "Oh, Ruth, how wonderful to see you," or anything about me. He opened his mouth and said, "Ruth, is there any news of Jerusalem? Now my dear friends, these folks born of God and anointed with the Holy Spirit, with none of the theological sophistry, as I call it, that we have in these parts, certainly finding in their heart the most natural, spontaneous love for Israel and the Jewish people. Don't you think that's interesting? I think many of you know that I am connected with the intercessor movements, the international leadership of the intercessor movements. There are over 42, I think, national movements now in the world. And every second year we have a get together in which I find one of the most amazing times that I had the privilege to be part of because of the information I hear from all kinds of countries, what's going on in them and how things are moving and what the Lord is doing in this. And I found one of the most amazing things a few years ago when Dennis Clark was still with us on earth. I remember that we asked country after country, "What is the second country most prayed for by the intercessors in your country?" And far and away, all over the world next to their own country, the country of their origin, Israel was prayed for more than any other. Now, if this is a political accident, if this really is some theological error on our part, how come the intercessors who have to walk reasonably near the Lord to be an intercessor? I'm not talking about prayer, peoples who pray prayers. Some prayers, I feel, are 90% hot wind. I'm talking about intercessors. Those whose whole being is consumed by the spirit of God and who know what it is to have conceived within them, by the Spirit, burdens that cannot come out any other way than by prayer, and never leave them until the matter's fulfilled. How come these people are so deceived that they pray so much for Israel? No, my friends. I don't think that at all. I think that God is at work. So what is the present outlook as far as Israel is concerned? On the longer term, I think it's quite clear there is going to be at some point in the next decade or two, a huge confrontation with many, many nations involved in it. I would imagine that this Gulf war has much to do with it. If I am right then the whole stage is being set for the fulfillment of that prophecy. I said it in 1974, when Iran was an ally of Israel and had an alliance with the United States, when Ethiopia was an ally of is Israel. Some of you will remember, I went around different places saying to people, "Keep your eye on Iran. She's got to go from being an ally to an antagonist, and Ethiopia's got to go from being an ally to an antagonist," since 74. It all happened at the end of the seventies, so suddenly and swiftly. Today, the whole scene has changed. Iran is the leader of the antagonists against Israel, along with Libya or what is called Phut in that prophecy in Ezekiel 38 and 39. I would say my dear friends, we are in the run up to a very big confrontation with enormous consequences for the Christian Church, because if I am right, two huge forces are going to come to their end in that confrontation. Not that they will never be seen again in the world, but they will have their back broken. One is international Marxism centered in the Kremlin and the other is the Islamic revolution and revival centered in Iran. And if that happens, in a huge part of the world there will be a vacuum. Do you realize that in the Islamic world, two thirds of the population is under the age of 14? Can you imagine the vaccum that there's going to be, if this confrontation takes place with the whole concept in Islam of Allah predestinating all things? It will seem to be the end of Israel, little Israel with this huge force, with literally millions of men in uniform equipped and armed to the teeth. Everyone will say, "This is the end of Israel." And God will step in and destroy them. Then there will be a vacuum as far as the Islamic world is concerned with its theology in ruins. The greatest opportunity the church will have. The same with the Marxist world. And if you don't take it up, I'm not being rude, in Britain or in the United States, I'm not the least bit bothered because God will have equipped the church in Russia and China to do it. They will go out and they'll take the gospel - to the shame of the affluent church in the English speaking world - to the rest of the world. But there's one big point and that is, you folks have got the marvelous advantage of English as your mother tongue and as a world language, increasingly so. My dear friends, all I'm simply saying in this whole matter is I believe that on the longer term it's clear we have a big confrontation coming. On the shorter term it's much harder to predict anything.</p>
<cite>All I can say is this:</cite>
<time>51:40</time>
<p>Israel is home to stay, and there's no way that she'll ever be dislodged from the land. Jerusalem will remain her capital. I do not see it in any way, being taken away and Judea and Samaria, in my estimation, are going to remain Jewish. Now the point is the salvation of Israel. And I think that that is the most wonderful thing of all because in the Ezekiel prophecy, we are told that the Lord will pour out his spirit upon the house of Israel. And then in another place in Romans 11, it says, "... and the natural branches will be grafted back into their own olive tree. And I would not brethren have you ignorant of this mystery, lest you be wise in your own conceits that a hardening in part has befallen Israel until the full number of the Gentiles be come in and so all is Israel shall be saved." Well now my dear friends, doesn't that give us something to go on in this beginning of a new phase, this 40th year? And doesn't that somehow encourage our hearts? We are on the road, which will end with the coming of the King, and there couldn't be anything more glorious. True, there'll be antichrist somewhere on the road, and there will be a false prophet somewhere on the road, and a worldwide system somewhere on the road, and some kind of world faith somewhere on the road, and apostate church somewhere on the road, and much affliction somewhere on the road, but also on the road, the power of the Holy Spirit! So we have absolutely no need to be afraid. We are on the winning side in this matter. I think it is the most marvelous thing by the grace of God to be found in the unfolding purpose of God. There couldn't be anything more wonderful. It's put very simply by the apostle John, "He that doeth the will of God abideth forever." Well, my dear friends, in my estimation, what we've been talking about is the will of God. If we will only do it. What does that mean? Well, it means that many of you might have to pray in a way that you've never prayed before. You may have to open your hearts to let the Holy Spirit do a work in you that he's never done before. May God bless you all and richly endow you and equip you for all that lies ahead in this new phase. May you know more of the Lord's heart for his bride and his love for Israel. May you know, the deep, deep love of the Messiah Jesus.</p>
