Would you turn with me to the prophecy of Jeremiah, chapter 31?
Jeremiah 31, from verse 3:
The Lord appeared of old unto me, saying,
Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love:
Therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.
Again will I build thee, and thou shalt be built, O virgin of Israel:
Again shalt thou be adorned with thy tabrets,
And shalt go forth in the dances of them that make merry.
Again shalt thou plant vineyards upon the mountains of Samaria:
The planters shall plant, and shall enjoy the fruit thereof.
For there shall be a day,
That the watchmen upon the hills of Ephraim shall cry,
Arise ye, and let us go up to Zion unto the Lord our God.
For thus saith the Lord:
Sing with gladness for Jacob, and shout for the chief of the nations:
Publish ye, praise ye, and say, O Lord, save Thy people,
The remnant of Israel.
Behold, I will bring them from the north country,
And gather them from the uttermost parts of the earth,
And with them the blind and the lame,
The woman with child and her that travaileth with child together:
A great company shall they return hither.
They shall come with weeping;
And with supplications will I lead them:
I will cause them to walk by rivers of waters,
In a straight way wherein they shall not stumble;
For I am a father to Israel,
And Ephraim is My first-born.
Hear the word of the Lord, O ye nations,
And declare it in the isles afar off, and say,
He that scattered Israel will gather him,
And keep him, as a shepherd doth his flock.
And if you will turn to the prophecy of Ezekiel, Ezekiel chapter 36, from verse 8:
But ye, O mountains of Israel, ye shall shoot forth your branches,
And yield your fruit to My people Israel; for they are at hand to come.
For, behold, I am for you,
And I will turn unto you, and ye shall be tilled and sown:
And I will multiply upon you man and beast, even all the house of Israel, all of it;
And the cities shall be inhabited, and the waste places shall be builded:
And I will multiply upon you man and beast; and they shall increase and be fruitful:
And I will cause you to be inhabited after your former estate,
And will do better unto you than at your beginnings;
And ye shall know that I am the Lord.
Yea, I will cause men to walk upon you, even My people Israel;
And they shall possess thee, and thou shalt be their inheritance,
And thou shalt no more henceforth bereave them of children.
I want to add two further verses in that chapter. Verse 22:
Therefore say unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord God:
I do not this for your sake, O house of Israel,
But for My holy name, which ye have profaned among the nations, whither ye went.
Verse 32:
Not for your sake do I this, saith the Lord God, be it known unto you:
Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel.
And then I want to read from the New Testament, in the Roman letter of the apostle Paul, chapter 11. Romans 11, from verse 25:
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 ungodliness from Jacob:
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 without repentance.
Shall we pray?
Beloved Lord, as we come to this last evening of our time together in this conference, we want to thank You for all that You have done in these days. We thank You for the grace You have given. We thank You for the power with which You have empowered all those who have served.
We thank You for those who have given sacrificial service behind the scenes, laid down their lives for our comfort and help. We thank You, Lord. We believe that You have noted every single sacrificial act, and You will reward.
We thank You for the grace You have given to those of us who have ministered Your word, and we thank You for the word You planted in our hearts.
Now, Lord, we come to this last evening. We need You, Lord. We need You very greatly. The speaker is weak, and we are weak. We need You, beloved Lord, to tabernacle upon us with grace and power.
And as we talk about this matter of the battle over Your coming, Lord, we pray that something will enter our hearts and remain there, like a beacon, a light.
And for every young person here this evening, I want to pray especially that the word of God, the prophetic word of God, will come to mean more to them than ever before.
And we ask all this in the precious name of our Lord Jesus. We stand by faith into that anointing, grace, and power for the speaking of Your word, for the translating of Your word, and for the hearing of Your word. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
I think it is fitting that we should end on this note tonight: the battle over the coming of the Lord.
Last night I spoke about the heart of that conflict, which is the testimony of Jesus. It is the bride making herself ready. It is the production of the gold, the precious stone, and the pearl, out of which that New Jerusalem alone is built, out of which the bride, the wife of the Lamb, is produced.
Tonight, I want to speak about the battle over Israel.
It is fitting that, on this last evening, we should dwell on this subject, as my dear brother Christian has dwelt on it this morning, because this age will end with the glorious salvation of the house of Israel.
God’s purpose for the church cannot be fulfilled without the Jewish people. It began with them when God appeared—the God of glory appeared—to our forefather Abraham. And He said two things: “Out of thee shall come a great nation,” and secondly, “In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.”
It is thousands of years since God spoke to our father Abraham. We have seen that vessel, through the old covenant, in the midst of conflict and battle—attempt after attempt to liquidate her. Whether it was the Pharaohs of Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Hellenism—the most seductive of all Satan’s attempts to destroy and liquidate Israel—or the Roman Empire, that great antagonist of Israel, all the way through there has been this conflict.
That battle never ceased, even when the Jewish people rejected Jesus.
I find it one of the strangest concepts in this world that people tell me that the reason the Jewish people have suffered so terribly since the rejection of Jesus is because of their rejection of Him.
Now, I find this extraordinary. Whether it was the Crusaders, the Inquisition, the pogroms in which thousands died, or the Holocaust, in which at least six million died—I personally believe that Simon Wiesenthal is right when he says it is not six million; it is eight million. That is two-thirds of the Jewish population in the world that died in the Holocaust.
I am told it is because the Jews rejected Jesus. There is no doubt that suffering came. Exile came. Hatred came. Persecution came.
But I do not understand the mindset that tells me that the true church, which has suffered the same way—persecuted, hated, misrepresented, martyred left and right—suffered because the name of the Lord is in them, while the Jewish people suffer because they rejected Jesus. It does not make sense.
Why does Satan hate a people who rejected the Messiah? Why does he follow them and pursue them everywhere through these two thousand years? Why?
Unless Satan knows that the end of this age will see the salvation of the Jewish people and the completion of the purpose of God.
I hope that I can make myself as clear as possible. The battle over the Lord’s return is not only to do with the testimony of Jesus. It is focused also upon Israel.
The aim of Satan—listen carefully—and the powers of darkness is to liquidate Israel before she can be saved.
Why do you think the Holocaust came? Why do you think so many of our people died in the most horrific circumstances—at least two million toddlers? Why?
It was Satan’s great attempt to frustrate the purpose of God. It was to make impossible the recreation of the state of Israel. But the Lord turned the wrath of men to deliverance, and the Holocaust became the catalyst for the recreation of the state of Israel.
When, at the end of those terrible days, two million survivors came out of the camps, they had nowhere to go. When they went back to their homes, some of them were murdered by Gentile, so-called Christians.
Then into their hearts came the words of Theodor Herzl: “When you act upon the question of there being a state, it will happen.” And they went back to the land of Israel on anything seaworthy and, in some cases, unseaworthy.
The whole might of the British Empire stood against them—the Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy—but it could not stop that flow of humanity. In the end, the British were weary of the whole matter and gave up.
It is a very strange thing that the last time the British flag flew over Jerusalem, a mistake was made: it was upside down.
My dear brother Christian has given us a panoramic view of the imminence of the Lord’s return and has said very much about the recreation of the state of Israel.
Dear family of God, I want to tell you that another Holocaust is planned.
Ayatollah Khomeini said, “Let us pray to Allah that all the Jews will come back to the promised land, and then we will gas them and incinerate them in one place.” Ahmadinejad has said repeatedly, “We will wipe Israel off the face of the world map.”
Iran at present has a nuclear programme which, we believe from our security services, is a nuclear programme. And the first recipient will be Israel.
Now, this is not a fairy tale. It is fact.
Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, has said that he sees in world society, in Europe particularly, the same evidence as in the run-up in the 1930s to the Holocaust.
Tommy Lapid, who has recently died, the founder of the political party Shinui, said the same thing shortly before he died. Elie Wiesel, of course, was a survivor of Auschwitz. Tommy Lapid was also a survivor of Auschwitz. He said, “I see all the characteristics of those days that were the run-up to the Nazi Holocaust.”
The battle over the Lord’s return has very much to do with Israel. I have said already, and I will say it again: the purpose of God cannot be completed without the Jewish people.
Satan, thank God, does not know everything. He is a created being. That in itself is a mystery: that he has huge intelligence, but not supreme intelligence.
He picks up from the word of God. I know it may sound very strange to you, but Satan is an avid student of the word of God. He is also an unknown but very present person, through his great intelligence network, at every prayer meeting that counts for the Lord.
He has picked up one single thing: when the Jewish people have the veil on their heart torn away, the blindness of their eyes turned into sight, and the hardening in part which has befallen them melted, it is a bell tolling out his end.
Therefore, he will do every single thing to liquidate this people before the miracle takes place.
He will fail. He will utterly fail.
And his last great attempt to liquidate this people will lead to their salvation. Just as the first attempt to liquidate them became the catalyst for the recreation of the state of Israel and the regathering of the exiles to the land of Israel, so this last attempt to liquidate them will become, in my estimation, the catalyst for their salvation.
It is hard for me to be able to express this fully, but still a large number of the people in Israel are survivors of the Holocaust.
I think of the managing director of the area in which I live, the East Jerusalem Development Company—a wonderful man, Yitzhak Yaacobi. He was a little boy, only four years of age, when he was sent into the concentration camp gas chambers to pull out the gold teeth of the people who died. To his last day, he suffered. His eyes were protruding from the thyroid. He was a wonderful man.
I think of one of our greatest children’s-story writers, who lives just a few houses from me, who was another one of the boys who pulled out the gold teeth. I think of my bank manager; he was another one, Mr. Wolfson.
Because I lost my father’s family, they were all like a secret service, a clan, a society that looked after us. I think of dear Anna, who always wanted her awful little pug to mate with my Tibetan spaniel. Every time I saw her coming down with this one-eyed pug, I would seize little Ting and lift her up.
Anna was a girl when she was put into a hole in the ground in Hungary, and for three and a half years she never saw the sun or the sky. When she came out, her whole family had died.
Or I think of the dear man who records my updates and other messages in Jerusalem, Gil Cahan. He and his twin brother were buried in a hole for two years because Dr. Mengele, the Angel of Death, was looking for them to conduct experiments on them.
It is something amazing that God has produced such a nation as Israel. Out of this broken-heartedness, out of this sorrow, out of this pain, came a state. Can you believe it? It is sixty-one years of age, and in those sixty-one years it has had nine wars.
The hatred of Islam’s avowed enemies toward us has not abated—not one whit. I hope that at least what I say this evening will enter your heart in a new way.
It is only when the Holy Spirit can move you to pray for this. Now listen carefully to me: Israel, especially Jerusalem, is a magnet for every Christian nutcase in the church.
We have them all. On the last count, we have three Elijahs. One of them goes past my kitchen every day with this little attaché case, in English, Arabic, and Hebrew: “Elijah, the servant of the Lord.” He is from Wyoming.
We have two Jeremiahs. We have three Virgin Marys. And that is only the beginning. We have a whole special ward in a special hospital for what we call the Jerusalem Syndrome, which is that when you come to Israel, suddenly you see yourself as some biblical character.
It is quite extraordinary. And when you leave Israel, it goes—you become normal again. We have so many of the two witnesses, I could fill a cathedral with them.
I do not want you to become an Israel nutcase. What I want is intercessors who will stand before God and pray for this nation.
The only way that she will be delivered is by the Lord. There is no other deliverance.
The hatred of the nations, the misrepresentation of Israel, and the growing anti-Semitic incidents in Europe, in the United Kingdom, and even here in North America, are frightening.
When you realize that the Jewish Board of Deputies in Britain has told all Jews not to wear the Star of David, not to wear a kippah on the head, not to do anything in public that would identify them as Jews, you realize how serious this matter is.
And when you come to the so-called church—I do not want to be bitter or anything, but I am talking about evangelical churches, whether Episcopalian, Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, or others—you have to go many, many miles to find an assembly of God’s people that has any idea of Israel, any love for Israel, or any sympathy for them.
In other words, no wonder Elie Wiesel, Tommy Lapid, and others feel as they do, because this is exactly what happened in Germany. In the end, they hung flags with swastikas on them inside church buildings, with pictures of Adolf Hitler on the wall.
I spoke with people in 1950, not so long after the war. I spoke with Christian leaders in Germany. I asked them, “But how did you vote for Hitler?”
And they said, “Well, if you had been here, you would have voted for him. He was the only person who could save us. There was no other. He said he would build roads and employ hundreds of thousands of men, give them jobs, give them an income. We voted for him. He said he would take our currency, where we had to use barrelfuls of marks to get a loaf of bread, and turn it back again into a real currency with value. We believed him. He said that he would restore the dignity of the German people. We believed him.”
Then I said to them, “Did you not understand when he talked about Jews as the vermin of European society, as the poison of society, when he spoke about a final solution? Did you not wake up?”
“No,” they said. “We believed him.”
That is why Elie Wiesel, Tommy Lapid, and others feel that we are in the run-up to another Holocaust. The same thing is happening in the assemblies of Christians all through the British Isles and through Europe. Those who had a very clear understanding of Israel a hundred years ago are gone.
Instead, Israel is looked upon as the bully, as the Goliath, as a people that tread on human rights.
I read you two passages from the Old Testament. The first I read was Jeremiah 31.
Did you notice that the Lord said something wonderful? Listen carefully:
Hear the word of the Lord, O ye nations,
And declare it in the isles that are far off,
He that scattered Israel will gather him,
And keep him as a shepherd doth his flock.
In other words, Israel is a sign—a divine sign—to the nations. She is a divine sign in her scattering. She is a divine sign in her regathering. And she is a divine sign in her being kept and preserved by God.
We who live in Israel and know it very well know that it really is a miracle that we are still alive, that we are still free, that we are still in Asia.
Someone says to me, “Yes, but all these Scriptures were fulfilled in the return from Babylon.” Oh, really?
In the return from Babylon, you think Jeremiah’s prophecy, contained in Jeremiah 30 and 31, is all to do with the return from Babylon? Well, now listen to this. Why does the Lord say, “Again, planters will plant vineyards on the mountains of Samaria. They will plant vines and eat the fruit thereof”—or, actually, enjoy it, wine or fruit? When did that happen?
Not in the return from Babylon, because the Samaritans and the Jews were at loggerheads and remained at loggerheads all through the centuries, till you know the story of the Lord Jesus.
How can any minister of God, any child or servant of the Lord, say such things? Surely they know the story of the Lord Jesus with the Samaritan woman, when she said to Him, “How is it that Thou, being a Jew, hast dealings with me, a Samaritan woman?”
For the Jews and Samaritans have no dealings with each other—no dealings with each other. When they came back from Babylon, they never recolonized Samaria.
So, in this amazing prophecy, the Holy Spirit has put a time frame into the prophecy. He said only when the planters plant vineyards on the mountains of Samaria, plant them, and enjoy the fruit and the wine that comes from it, then this prophecy is fulfilled.
Not in 1948, but in 1967.
Those dreadful places that you hear about all the time from your State Department—the settlements—and those horned creatures, the settlers: they went into Samaria, took eroded land that was already belonging to the Jewish people from 1880, and planted vineyards.
Those vineyards—I should not say this to you, God-fearing and pious people—but those vineyards have won gold labels in all the wine festivals of Europe.
Then a little word that the Holy Spirit put into this prophecy with great humour has been fulfilled.
And this whole question about them coming from the north and coming from the uttermost parts of the earth: we know it is to do with our century, the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
And we know this wonderful word:
Hear the word of the Lord, O ye nations;
Declare it in the isles that are afar off.
He that scattered Israel will gather him,
And keep him as a shepherd doth his flock.
Well, think of Ezekiel. What did he say? He said the mountains will shoot forth their branches. When the first settlers came into the land, the soil was eroded. It was bare. There was nothing.
The great forests that many of you have seen when you have come as pilgrims to the Holy Land—those great forests were not there. They have all been planted. That great forest just west of Jerusalem, so beautiful, so magnificent, there was not a tree there in the twenties.
That great humorist Mark Twain, in his book The Innocents Abroad, actually speaks of it. He says, “I went everywhere. This land is treeless, waterless, and peopleless. I do not know why they call it the Holy Land.” And he was not a believer.
That was only in the nineteenth century. Much more accurate was the Presbyterian who wrote a geography of the land, gave the contours of the land, but said, “The glory of the Lord has long departed from this land.”
Dear child of God, I could take you anywhere, everywhere, in the land of Israel, and what will you see? Forests, fields, orchards, vineyards, olive groves—everywhere.
God has restored the fertility of the land. He has also restored the ecology of the land. All kinds of creatures have come back to us. It is almost amusing.
I must watch myself on time, but for thousands of years those great birds, pelicans, have flown from Central Africa all the way up to the Black Sea. They go through Israel and spend a day or two there—those ungainly creatures that, only when they fly, are incredibly athletic.
In the north of Israel are thousands of fish dams, and these birds are protected. No one is allowed to poison them, trap them, or kill them.
They sit on the fish dams, and they feel that the fish dams are divine provision. The trouble is, they eat kilos of fish a day. So the fish farmers made a great complaint about it to our agricultural authorities, who in turn went to the Prime Minister.
They tried to think of a way they could get rid of the pelicans without killing them. And then they came up with it—only in Israel, and only Jews could come up with this kind of idea.
They would get two planes. First of all, they would put up big poles with Chinese crackers on them. Then they would light the crackers, and when they went, “B-b-b-bang,” up would fly the pelicans. Then the two planes would take off and herd them on their way back to Africa.
So amazing was this whole thing that it was put on television for the delight of the Israeli public. We watched the firecrackers, then the planes take off, and we heard them over the intercom saying, “Yes, they’re on their way.”
They went all the way to Ashkelon in the south, just beyond Ashkelon, and the two planes turned back—and so did all the pelicans.
Now, why do you think the pelicans would want to live in a land that was barren? Of course, they always went through it. Something has happened to the ecology, to the fertility of the land, so much so that the pelicans say, “Why go on to the Black Sea?”
They are like us—lazy. If the fish is here, and there is greenery here, and water is here, why not stay?
But I could tell you many other things, though I must watch it. Israel has become a great parrot-breeding centre. You could never have done that in the old days. It is because of the fertility and the ecology that have been restored.
Some of the birds that are near extinction are being bred in Israel. I know one of the top ornithologists of the world, on the world committee for the preservation of exotic birds that are near extinction. Can you believe it?
And then, you from the Far East, who came originally from the Far East—this is a good story for you, but I will not tell you any more.
You know, in Japan and in Taiwan, they bred koi carp. It was a very lucrative business. They sent them on big planes, but the trouble is, with koi carp they are very sensitive to conditions, and many, many died on the journey.
Then Israel got the idea. So she has been breeding koi in their thousands. We are much nearer to Europe, Britain, and the Far East. This could not have happened unless something had happened to the ecology of the land.
But one could go on. As Christian has already pointed out, there are cities that are rebuilt, towns that have been rebuilt—not rebuilt for a thousand or more years, in some cases two thousand years—all of them living cities and towns.
And, of course, everything else. We have a parliament with the same hot air that you have in Congress and the Senate—only it is Jewish hot air. Is that not amazing? For two thousand years there had been no parliament, and suddenly the Sanhedrin came into being, in exactly the same arrangement as in the old days.
I can talk about a lot of other things. I can talk about Hebrew, which ceased to be a spoken language of the people—only a liturgical language, like Latin in the old days in the Roman Catholic Church. But Hebrew today is the language of five million native-born Israelis.
There is no other instance in the world of a language that ceased to be spoken as a living language for seventeen hundred years being revived. Is that not amazing?
Dear family of God, Israel is a miracle.
When I see our soldiers, our airmen, and our naval men, it is a miracle. When I see Jewish policemen, it is a miracle. For two thousand years, we have been without any such thing.
When I see a Jewish traffic warden slapping a Jewish fine upon a Jewish car belonging to a Jewish driver, I see a miracle. It brings it home to us.
I find it interesting that in this extraordinary prophecy of Ezekiel, recorded in chapter 36, he not only covers all of this, but he says this:
Be ashamed, O house of Israel.
I did not do this for you.
I did it for My holy name.
Let it sink in: “I did it for My holy name.”
God has made a covenant with these people, and He said, “I will be your God.” Whether in judgment or in blessing, it is because He is the God of Israel.
Now, I have to watch myself because time flies, and there is such a lot to say.
Zechariah 12:10 says this:
And I will pour upon the house of David,
And upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem,
The spirit of grace and of supplication;
And they shall look unto Me whom they have pierced;
And they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son,
And shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his first-born.
Most of your versions—the old King James and many of the new versions—translate it a different way. They translate it, “They shall look on Me, whom they have pierced.” The Hebrew is a little preposition, al. You have it in our national airline, El Al: “up” and “unto.”
It is nearly always translated in the Old Testament as “toward” or “unto.” It can be translated “on.”
This is one of the problems when theology influences translation. The verse that influences this is in Revelation: “Every eye shall see Him, and they also that pierced Him.”
So they understand that this verse means that when the Lord Jesus returns, when the Jewish people see it is Jesus, when He says, “I am Jesus,” and when He is acclaimed by all who have been saved by Him as Jesus the King, they will own Him.
I doubt that is what Zechariah said. When I look on President Obama, it means only one thing: I physically see him. When I look on the Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth II, it means only one thing: I physically see her.
If I look unto President Obama, that means I respect his office, I respect his authority, I recognize him. When I look unto Queen Elizabeth, I respect her authority. I recognize her authority.
I realize many people have a different view. It does not matter in one way, but for my part, as a Jew, I do not understand why God would save our people physically. He never has saved anyone physically.
I mean by that: you did not come to the Lord because you saw Him, you looked on Him. You saw the Lord with the eyes of your heart. Divine light shone into that heart of yours, your eyes opened, and suddenly you realized He was your Lord.
That is what happened to me, anyway. I did not know—I had been very anti-Christian. I used to make the Boy Crusaders in the school I was in nearly like hell. I pursued them and asked them, “Would you believe in that old fogey? That is from an antique person.” They were so offended with me.
But in the day that I saw the Lord spiritually, I was only thirteen—indeed, I was not even thirteen: twelve and a half, twelve and three-quarters. Can you believe it? Twelve and three-quarters. A terrible sense of sin came over me, and I wept, and I wept, and I wept.
That means, in my estimation, that this salvation of the house of Israel will actually take place before the coming of the Lord. This is confirmed by the words of the Lord Jesus in Matthew 23.
When He says, “Ye shall not see Me henceforth, till ye shall say,” in Hebrew, Baruch haba b’Shem Adonai—“Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.”
That sounds to me as if something has happened within them, so that when He appears they will be startled, shaken, but rather they will say, “Welcome in the name of the Lord.”
That is how we say it in Hebrew: Baruch haba. We say, “Welcome,” and it means welcome. Literally, it means, “Blessed be he that comes.”
And Jesus said, “You shall say unto Me, ‘Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.’” Something has happened. A revolution has taken place in the Jewish heart.
Oh, I wish I could make it clear.
Now I will finish—but do not get happy about it. Give me another five minutes.
The Lord has a colossal controversy with the nations. For the first time, the Lord is filled with anger, especially with the Western nations.
The root of this controversy of the Lord is the division of the promised land and the division of Jerusalem.
When you go back in your Bible to Genesis 17, there is this remarkable word. This is to Abraham:
And I will make thee exceeding fruitful,
And I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee.
And I will establish My covenant between Me and thee
And thy seed after thee throughout their generations
For an everlasting covenant,
To be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee.
And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee,
The land of thy sojournings, all the land of Canaan,
For an everlasting possession;
And I will be their God.
I find that quite amazing. People say, “Oh, the Hebrew word translated ‘everlasting’ does not mean everlasting; it means age-lasting.” Really?
God calls Himself El Olam, the everlasting God. He does not by that mean, “I am a God for an age.” The whole number from everlasting to everlasting—olam to olam—Thou art God.
Here it is again: “I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.”
In Hebrew, that word is impossible to translate by one word: mercy, loyalty, persevering love, overcoming love, covenant love. There is all this in the one word hesed, which is used over five hundred times in the Old Testament: “I have drawn thee with hesed.”
That is the kind of overcoming, persevering love that the Lord has shown toward Israel. He has brought back a blind, disobedient, in many cases atheistic, society. He has brought back a society that is Christ-rejecting.
But this covenant that God made with Abraham stands. It is an everlasting covenant, and whilst there is a physical generation of the seed of Abraham on the face of the earth, this covenant stands. It was never at any time superseded, cancelled, or shelved.
Then comes along an American president and Secretary of State and says—I am paraphrasing this—“What You did, God, was not politically correct. You have to divide the land between these two peoples.”
For me, this lies at the root of all our present financial, economic, and climate troubles, because the Lord has arisen with fury. The Lord is filled with anger over this.
How can anyone think that they are so great that they can contradict a covenant that He has made?
Now, this covenant that God made with Abraham—we read in Genesis 15 that it was unconditional. In those old days, when they made a covenant, blood had to be shed. The very word covenant in Hebrew, berith, means cutting. They had to cut the animal so that blood flowed.
Then they put one lot there and one lot there, and the two parties would walk up and down in between. Thus a covenant was made.
But if you read Genesis 15, you read that when Abraham had cut the animals and put them on either side, he fell into a deep sleep. When he awoke, a great smoking furnace was moving up and down between the divided animals.
In other words, it was the Lord. What He was saying was this: “I have not asked you, Abraham, to walk up and down. I am making with you an unconditional covenant.” This covenant is altogether different from the Mosaic covenant, which was conditional.
That means that this lasts forever.
Then think of another matter: Jerusalem.
In Deuteronomy 12:5 and 11, I think it is, you will read this little word:
Ye shall not offer your offerings in every place that ye see:
But unto the place which the Lord your God shall choose
Out of all your tribes, to put His name there,
Even unto His habitation shall ye seek,
And thither thou shalt come.
That place was Jerusalem. What does that mean? Listen again: “I have caused My name to dwell there.”
A name here in the States, in Britain, and in Europe is often given because it sounds nice, because it sounds sweet to our ears. It does not necessarily have meaning. But in the old book, all the names had meaning. They were prophetic of the people.
Now, when the Lord said, “This place where I will cause My name to dwell,” what was He saying? He was saying, “Where I cause Myself to be known.”
That city will represent My government, My throne, My word, My purpose, My Messiah, My salvation, and My kingdom. It will represent My eternal purpose.
So when we come to the end of the Bible, it is this New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, having the glory of God. There is something tremendous here.
But the old Jerusalem, until that city finally comes down, still represents the mind of God, the heart of God, the word of God, the purpose of God, the Messiah of God, and the salvation of God.
Then your State Department, Downing Street in Britain, and the Élysée Palace in France come along and say, “The only solution is to redivide Jerusalem.”
This city of which the Lord said, “I will cause My name to dwell there.” No wonder He is angry. No wonder He has risen with fury. And no wonder He has a determination to bring the nations to total destruction.
I do not believe that all these stimuli and all these other things—printing money galore in Britain, in France, in Germany, and in the United States—are going to answer this. We shall see a little lift and then a nose-dive.
There will not be the money to pay pensions in ten years’ time. There will not be the money for healthcare services.
It was in 1998 that the Lord spoke to me, ten or eleven years ago, in the Intercessors’ Leaders Conference in the Philippines, in Laguna.
And I understood the Lord to say, “I am angry. I have risen with anger.”
He said, “I will judge them by flood, by fire, by hurricane, by tornado, by earthquake. But,” He said, “they sit so affluent, so complacent, so powerful. I will hit them where it hurts the most. I will smash their economies.”
Well, nothing happened for some years, but I knew in my own heart that God had spoken to me. That gave me an understanding that we are very near to the rapture.
We are very, very near to the final event: the Parousia, the rapture, the tribulation, the Antichrist, the final coming of the Lord.
Now, I may be wrong, and I will be quite happy to be wrong on this matter. If, in ten years’ time, everything has returned to the never-never, and we all live on credit, and everything rolls prosperously onward, you are, if I am here, perfectly at liberty to come to me and say, “Brother, you were wrong.”
And I will say to you, “Yes, I was wrong.” But I do not think so. I do not think so.
I think we have reached, as I have said for some years, a crossroads for mankind. We have entered into the last day—as Christian put it, the end of the end times.
Beloved child of God, pray for Israel. It is not only her deliverance, but your deliverance. It is not only your blessing; it will be her blessing. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
I read those wonderful words in Romans 11, which I do not think can ever be excelled. They are so clear to me, so powerful. They were prophecy. Paul was prophesying.
“I would not, brethren, have you ignorant of this mystery.” What? The mystery of Israel. This mystery: that a hardening in part has befallen Israel.
I do not really like that word, though it is right—hardening in part, partial hardening. I much prefer the literal: partial petrification.
Now, I know you hear these long words, because I listen sometimes to the weather report, and they always speak about precipitation and these kinds of things, rather than using good Anglo-Saxon words. But I like this: partial petrification has taken place in Israel.
Until the full number of the Gentiles be come in—not to be mixed up with the times of the Gentiles.
And so all Israel shall be saved. And then listen. I do not know where we got it from. Dear Paul—he had this Jewish mind that runs like Einstein everywhere, all over the place.
And he says, I believe by the Spirit:
As it is written,
There shall come out of Zion a Deliverer;
He shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob.
If you look for that, it is quite different in the Hebrew. It is Isaiah 59:20: “And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob.”
That is exactly what happened in the early church. I have looked up the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament Hebrew, and I cannot find what Paul was quoting. I can only believe that the Holy Spirit led the apostle Paul to say something unusual.
Because he said, “There shall come out of Zion a Deliverer, and He shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob.”
There you have something amazing. You have Jacob and Israel, and Jacob into Israel; and thus all Israel shall be saved. He shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob.
When Jacob was in trouble, he had Laban behind him, he had Esau in front of him, and he had no one to turn to. When he was alone and full of fear, the Lord appeared and wrestled with him.
Is that not amazing, that the Lord wrestled with him?
Do you know that the Lord made Himself weak? Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote an amazing poem on this: that this is Jesus on Calvary. He made Himself weak that He might save us.
He made Himself weak so that Jacob—do not tell me that the Lord could not have knocked out Jacob in a moment. He could have beaten him, clapped his two ears, stunned him, twisted him round, and flung him out. The Lord could have done it in a moment.
But instead, the Lord let Jacob get the better of Him. He got so much the better of Him that the Lord said, “Let Me go.”
And Jacob said, “I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me.” And the Lord said, “What is thy name?” As if the Lord did not know.
Why did the Lord say that? He knew very well it was Jacob. He had planned this. Laban was behind him, Esau was in front of him. The Lord had planned the whole of Jacob’s life for this one moment.
And then the Lord said, “What is your name?”
Jacob could have said, “I am Abraham’s grandson.” That would have been a get-out. He could have said, “I am Isaac’s son.” That would have been a good get-out. Instead, for the first time, he said, “I am the twister.”
And in that moment, God said to him, “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel”—prince with God.
There are many different versions of Israel: God persists, God perseveres. But they all mean one thing: it is the grace of God.
So my feeling is this: do not pray sentimental prayers. Do not be afraid that Israel is facing extinction. Do not be afraid of the gathering storm cloud in the Middle East. It is the Lord.
He has got His Jacob. Laban is behind him—his mother, and how much? In front of him is Iran. Do not be afraid, because the Lord will appear, and finally Jacob will become Israel.
Then all the suffering of the Jewish people, and all the suffering of the church, will turn to glory.
May the Lord bless this word to you.