God says in Ezekiel chapter 36, beginning at
verse 24, to the people of Israel, to
the Jewish people, for I will take you
from among the nations, gather you out of
all countries, and bring you into your own
land.
One thing in the Bible does not need
to be done, is to whom the land
belongs.
You don't see it that way.
Then I will sprinkle clean water on you.
You should be clean.
I will cleanse you from all your sin
and the water of life.
I will give you a new heart, and
put a new spirit within you.
I will take the heart of stone out
of you, out of your flesh, and give
you a heart of flesh.
I will put my spirit within you, and
cause you to walk in my statutes, and
you will know my increase.
Well, you see, God has said, He will
change.
When I was confirmed by the Bishop of
Oxford, I still had the old heart.
I tried hard, but it didn't work.
When God put a new spirit within me,
it was natural to walk in His way.
So that's what has to happen to the
Jewish people.
Now, I want to say one more thing.
In Isaiah, chapter 6, this is again addressed
to the Jewish people about this land.
The sons of foreigners shall build up your
wall, and their king shall minister to you.
For in my wrath I struck you, but
in my favor I have had mercy.
Therefore your gates shall be opened continually.
They shall not be shut day or night,
that men may bring to you the wealth
of the Gentiles, and their kings in recess.
Now this is a verse I want to
tell you.
For the nation and kingdom which will not
serve you shall perish, and those nations shall
be utterly ruined.
Can you hear me?
The nation and kingdom which will not serve
you shall perish, and those nations shall be
utterly ruined.
Who is you?
Israel.
See, this is not a little matter.
The destiny of many nations, including Britain, depends
on the way we respond to what God
is doing for Israel.
See, God is changing our governmental order.
He's raising up a new governmental system.
He's putting new people in place.
And our destiny is going to depend on
how we respond.
I've been so grateful to the nation and
the kingdom who will not serve you, shall
perish.
Who is you?
Israel.
And that's very hard for British people to
digest.
We've had an empire which has largely evaporated,
and we are used to governing people.
But God says there's a coming of time
for the nation and the kingdom that will
not serve Israel, shall perish.
And I think that time is very close.
And I'm deeply concerned about the way the
world is being handled in Britain.
See, what is called replacement theology is directly
contrary to what is being handled.
Unless Britain repents, they will perish.
Very few people can take this seriously.
But the truth of the matter is we
determine our destiny by how we respond to
what God is doing for Israel.
The nation and the kingdom that will not
serve you re-gathered it, will perish.
Those nations shall be utterly ruined.
I don't live in Britain.
I don't know.
I don't have the impression that many Christian
poets are being raised to warn the British
people about their attitude to Israel.
You know, my picture of replacement theology is
a man married a woman whose name was
Elizabeth.
Then he got tired of her, so he
divorced her and married another woman whose name
was Sarah.
People said, that's wrong.
After a while, he changed her name.
He said, it's Elizabeth.
It is all right now.
Adonai is Adonai.
No matter what name it's called.
If God were to do that, he would
be an Adonai.
But he isn't.
He's never gone to Israel.
He had every basis for doing so.
And he's never taken another wife.
See, it's impugning the character of God.
I suggest that.
It's not a little thing.
It's very, very serious.
And I'm asking you, British, what are you
doing with your voices?
Are you speaking up?
Are you praying?
Or are you just watching things slide into
a pit?
Or just let me read that again.
For the nation and kingdom which will not
serve you shall perish, and those nations shall
be utterly ruined.
Would that happen to Britain?
It will.
There's a great deal of arrogance in so
many of us.
We can't believe that God really requires us
to humble ourselves, submit ourselves to him, to
his requirements.
That really is the message that's on my
heart.
The nation and the kingdom which will not
serve you shall perish.
Very, very clear.
You is restored in Israel.
And God is going to set up a
new order of government.
Nations will take their places.
At the moment, I see very little hope
for Britain.
I know there are wonderful people like some
of you who are really open.
Are you really concerned about your nation?
Yes, we are.
How much thought do you feel?
How much prayer do you feel?
Praying that Britain will not take a stand
or change her stand.
I have it in mind.
I'm writing a number of books.
Whether this one will ever come up.
But I have it in mind to write
a book about Europe.
There's hardly a nation in Europe that hasn't
persecuted and witnessed persecution.
The provisional title of my book may never
come up.
It is judgment over Europe.
But I see Europe as a boiling pot,
bursting with wickedness, very sophisticated, very smart, and
very simple.
And I think there will be millions of
those people who have been massacred in the
nations of Europe.
And you can hardly find a nation in
which that hasn't happened.
I think the nation is probably disposed of.
And I don't believe God is going to
pardon so many.
I believe that the day of reckoning, if
I were a European, I would want to
change it.
How many times when you go to church
do you hear a message on the judgment?
No, we don't.
So God has given up judging.
Or has the church given up preaching?
I haven't planned to preach this message.
But I wonder whether it wouldn't be good
if we spent a little time repenting on
behalf of Britain.
Few nations have been so favored by God
as the British did.
And in some way, we've responded.
Right now, we are on top of a
slippery slope.
And I don't know, I don't live in
Britain, I don't know how many churches are
warning the British people.
You see, replacement theology, there's a way with
it.
It would be very convenient if it were
true.
But it isn't.
It's the most absurd concoction that you may
ever think of.
It's not my business to deal with it.
But it is your business.
Thank you Derek for your challenge and for
the very direct word that you've brought to
us for the nation and the kingdom which
will not serve Israel will perish and the
nations will be utterly ruined.
And thank you for speaking with such clarity
to us on that word that God has
given you for the British people.
Good evening everyone.
Shall we just pray for our Amen and
Malcolm?
Father, thank you for this brief but very
stirring report from your two sons.
Bless you Lord for safety and for vision,
for hearts that your spirit has touched.
And Father, you've thrown Amen in the deep
end it seems.
We pray Lord by the Holy Spirit you'll
manage the translation, the preaching, the worship, the
teaching Lord.
And Father, just thank you for his zeal
for you.
We lift him up Lord, deliver him from
the oppression, the powers of darkness.
Fill him Lord with the power of the
Holy Spirit and Lord with the spirit of
faith, vision and discernment.
Father, in Jesus' name, Amen.
Jim mentioned a couple of Ethiopians, one who
was at the convention, the one who will
be here next week.
I was crying out to God on January
the 6th this year for just some outside
confirmation of his will for my life in
view of the fact, you know, marriage was
knocking at the door and I needed to
be sure that was one of several confirmations
I sought.
And it was the very next day when
this chap was going to be, this tall,
lanky Ethiopian believer, filled with the spirit by
the way, he's on fire for God.
He rang me very excitedly from Israel, surprisingly
with a joint message from him and the
one who was at the convention because he'd
met him again in Ethiopia.
Got a word for you and he gave
me two scriptures.
One was Exodus 23 20, Behold I'm going
to send an angel before you to guard
you and bring you to the place I
have appointed for you.
He goes on to say, watch it, make
sure you obey.
And the next one was from Isaiah 58
11, The Lord will guide you continually, he
will strengthen your bones, need that at my
age, make you like a watered garden.
And I took that as a real confirmation
because it seemed to satisfy my spirit.
I've had others since then.
But I want to recommend, come next week
to hear Mephireti.
Let's just pray, shall we?
Father, all of us, myself included, we hear
so much today in the way of challenge.
And Father, it's not easy to discern your
perfect will and priority for each of our
lives.
But Father, I believe you, your spirit is
saying something in particular to the church here
in Britain.
And I ask, Lord, small though we be
in number tonight, that your spirit would speak
to our hearts and to mine, Lord.
Lord, to get us beyond knowledge and understanding
into the area, Lord, of heart concern and
commitment and vision, Lord, in Jesus' name.
Amen.
The Lord's been speaking to me in recent
weeks on the fact that not only Israel
is a chosen nation, so is Britain.
Most of us would, you know, ask a
question about that, but Britain has been chosen
for a particular role.
She has been the leading missionary nation down
through the centuries.
She could be responsible for the founding of
what we call missionary work today.
English is the most spoken language across the
globe.
And the British Empire was something on which
the sun never set, it was set.
And while we pray for Israel, and I
know we should do so, we need to
realize that what happened to Israel, the Bible
very specifically warns us, can happen to others.
The whole climax, the apex of Romans 11
virtually is watch it.
What happened to them can happen to you.
And we don't realize that.
It's there, it's words, but it doesn't sink
in.
Just as Israel ignored the warnings of God,
we in Britain are asleep, we're complacent, we're
indolent, we're indifferent.
And I speak it in my own heart
too.
And this is a very, very serious matter.
The Islamic opposition, fanaticism we're seeing in this
country is just a foretaste, I believe, of
God trying to turn us to seek him.
We're seeing what's happening in Israel, and I
believe God is sovereign.
He's weeping, yes, over Israel, but he's allowed
that to put them into the corner where
they've got nowhere to turn but to him.
You see, we all speak about the kindness,
the love of God, but how much do
we speak about the severity of God and
the justice of God?
We don't.
And it's an imbalance.
We need to realize that the Far East,
Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, and whole continents have
been touched by the gospel through Britain.
The cross is at the center of the
British flag.
It's not at the center of our hearts
today, but it's the center of the British
flag.
And we used to sing a song, Britain
rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves, and so
on.
And Britain's never, never, never shall be slaves,
but actually on the horizon is slavery to
all sorts of sin, and even to Islam
in this country.
And I believe, I don't believe I'm positive
in my spirit.
There's a root cause.
It's not materialism.
It's not what we call idolatry.
It's Britain and Israel.
I have no question in my spirit.
And God speaking to other leading Christians about
this in the country, I was surprised in
the current new issue of Prophecy Today, there's
an article on this very theme.
And videos and DVDs are being produced on
this very aspect.
I'm going to give you some actual evidence
of God's concern through Britain of care for
Israel down through the centuries.
We all think about the Balfour Declaration.
It goes back centuries before then.
And I want us to realize, and let
me just turn you to begin with, to
Zechariah, the book of Zechariah, which I call
the revelation of the Old Testament.
Zechariah means God remembers his grandfather was Edo,
timely.
His great grandfather was Baruch.
And the meaning of him and the names
of his forebears is that God remembers.
And it's all about Jerusalem.
Jerusalem represents, of course, Israel.
God remembers.
And in his time, blessing is in the
offering.
While we know what scripture says about Israel,
no prophecy is fulfilled just because it's in
the word of God.
We have to pray it through.
And I feel, I know that Britain has
much to repent of in this, as she's
been chosen, not only for the gospel, but
chosen to be the mandate nation, the shepherd
nation for Israel.
We've welched on that.
And remembering that English is the most spoken
language in the world, the English Bible speaks.
If you read your Bible through once a
year, twelve times a day about Israel in
different ways, taking the names Jerusalem, Israel, Jacob,
Ephraim, and so on.
So much to say.
But the church in this country, apart from
ourselves and a few others like us, is
totally on the wrong track.
And how can we expect the government to
behave according to the word of God if
the church doesn't see it?
How can we?
And we need to be, not praying, we
need to be weeping on this.
And what I'm sharing tonight, I want to,
I feel it's a message for the church
nationwide.
Nationwide.
In Zechariah chapter one, in verse twelve, the
angel asked the Lord, How long are you
going to be indignant, angry with your people
during their dispersion?
And the Lord answers with gracious and comforting
words in verse thirteen.
And in verse fourteen he says, Proclaim, I
am exceedingly jealous for Jerusalem.
He doesn't say I'm jealous, he says I'm
exceedingly jealous.
And it's a great big adjective, more than
I can just convey in simple words.
And the jealousy here speaks of a passionate,
fiery love as a wife for his husband,
a husband for his wife, where he regards
her as exclusively his.
And this term, jealous, appears three times in
this book.
We don't fully understand the passion of God
for Israel, and for us, but I'm speaking
of Israel.
I'm exceedingly jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion.
Now, probably that doesn't hit us, and it
won't without praying through and waiting on God.
I can't convey it with my own words,
but I know how the Lord turned me
around some thirty, thirty-five years ago, against
my will, to see these things.
Because I sought him in prayer, and it
didn't happen in a minute.
But I waited on him, and he showed
me.
And then we go on, But I am
very angry with the nations who are at
ease.
In other words, don't care.
For while I was only a little angry,
they furthered the disaster.
The things that have been done in the
name of Christendom have turned the Jewish nation
further away from considering who Jesus is than
they would have been otherwise.
And God said, doesn't say, I'm angry, he
says, I'm exceedingly angry.
And then he goes on to say, Therefore,
says the Lord, I will return to Jerusalem
with compassion.
But in the AV, he says, jealousy, again.
God has a fiery love that surpasses anything
that you and I can grasp.
And I feel this has got to dawn
on our hearts if we're going to see
the way ahead.
We know what's happening in Israel at the
moment.
And it doesn't leave the news for hardly
a minute.
Why?
Tiny little postage stamp nation, you can't see
it on the world map or the world
globe without getting very, very close.
Because it's not just the center of the
world map, it's the center of God's heart.
And what the church, basically, and you and
I are looking for is world blessing will
not happen without Israel's salvation prior to the
Lord's return.
So if you want to see the nations
reached, it's now we pray.
We don't wait until the Lord returns and
think, well, then there's going to be world
evangelism.
This is what it's all about, the opposition
in the Middle East, not the Palestinians, not
the Arabs.
It's Satan, of course.
It's a battle between who Jesus is.
It's virtually not a battle over territory even,
but just who is God and who isn't.
And you go on to Zechariah 8, chapter
8, you'll find the same passage that's there.
You'll find, just turning to Ezekiel chapter 38
at this point, there is a time coming
of God's judgment.
And it's that, I've got in the back
of my mind, I haven't got time to
go into it, but God speaks of a
day of vengeance.
And it's in Isaiah 61.
We know about the year of the Lord's
favor, but do we know of the day
of God's vengeance?
And what's it about?
It's about Zion.
Scripture tells us that.
And I'm anxious to see Britain spared, at
least to a great degree, of what I
feel lays ahead.
And it depends on our prayers.
Now you find Israel's tribulation, that is the
time in which this massive attack comes from
the far north with Islamic armies, nations allied
with them.
Ezekiel 38 and 39 is that massive invasion.
That is Jacob's tribulation.
I haven't time to go into proving it,
but there's four or five different books that
confirm, converge on that.
In the middle of that time, God allows
that invasion in order to bring Israel to
its knees.
And you'll find at the end of those
two chapters the Spirit is poured out on
Israel.
No doubt that that matches the Spirit of
grace and supplication that's poured on Israel.
You read in Zechariah 12.
But, here we are, Ezekiel 38, 18
and 19.
Now this is the culminating point.
The invasion has come.
The people are scared stiff.
They call it a national day or a
national time of prayer and fasting.
There's weeping, there's mourning, there's repentance and so
on.
God hears that even at the end of
the hour.
And here he intervenes.
In verse 18, chapter 38, it will come
about on that day when God comes against
the land of Israel, declares the Lord God,
that my fury will mount up in my
anger.
And in my zeal and my blazing wrath
I declare on that day there will surely
be a great earthquake in the land of
Israel.
Plus hailstones, plus tall buildings falling, plus those
enemies turning and fighting against one another as
you read on in the same chapter.
That's the beginning or part of God's vengeance.
It's not the day, but it's a forerunner
of what's going to follow later.
And if you look in the next chapter,
you may think, well that's happening out there
in Israel, and we're okay here.
But in the next chapter, verse 6, and
I shall send fire upon Magog, that is
the northern lands, and those who inhabit the
coastlands, that includes, in my opinion, Britain and
other lands, in safety, and they will know
that I am the Lord.
In other words, judgment's coming.
I don't think we need to know that
in order to drive us to it.
All we need to know is God's heart
is for his people.
And it's not because we Jewish people deserve
it, just the opposite.
By grace we're saved, not by being good,
not by something we deserve, but by grace.
And that's why when he starts with his
people, it's the spirit of grace and supplication
that's poured out upon them.
Now Britain has a specific role in her
salvation.
She's had that for centuries.
And I want to read to you from
a book written by a Jewish author, published
in 1956.
It's out of print now.
And what he says about Britain's relationship to
the Jewish people over the last four centuries,
in other words, since Queen Anne's day.
This is the book, The Vision Was There.
He's referring to the vision this country has
had right up until almost the time of
Israel's rebirth.
Far more was known about her future than
since she's come back on the map.
The church has gone backwards as far as
vision is concerned.
And you can prove that by some of
the hymns written centuries ago by people like
Wesleyan, Spurgeon, Isaac Watts, Horatio Bonner, many, many
other people.
I'm going to quote to you from this
book.
I've entitled this, Britain's History in Israel.
Nowhere, more than in Britain, has the idea
of the restoration of Israel been developed into
a doctrine and become the object of a
movement extending over more than three centuries.
Only in Britain have the leading spokesmen of
many generations been inspired by the vision of
a revived Israel.
Now this is not from a Christian.
This is from a Jewish man, unconverted.
Only there has the creation of a Jewish
national home been a serious and almost continuous
political issue which was finally translated into reality.
And it was, of course, in spite of
all the things we did wrong.
Finally, through the Balfour Declaration, something was done.
Yes, we gave away 78% of the
land and so on.
But nonetheless, in spite of that, it was
because of Britain that Israel came back on
the map.
And God chose Britain for that.
It wasn't no accident.
He calls his firstborn son in when he
was speaking to Moses and speaking to Pharaoh.
So God wouldn't let, it's not just some
accident that Britain was called to fill that
role.
The British movement for the restoration of Israel
is in fact one of the rare instances
of continuous interest shown by one nation in
the destiny of another people.
Its specific historical significance lies in the recognition
of Israel's restoration as an organic part of
Britain's political ideals.
In other words, when we get that back
into focus, A, in the church and B,
in the government, probably in that order, then
we can expect blessings from God.
And until we do, we cannot.
I know this is at the root, in
my estimation, of the troubles in this country.
Secondly, the earliest literary reflections on the restoration
of the Jews can be found as far
back as the great Franciscans in the 13th
and 14th centuries.
The teaching of John Wycliffe, the champion of
the Reformation, contains ideas later developed into the
doctrine.
The restoration of the Jews became a subject
of special theological inquiry in the last decades
of the Elizabethan era.
This is long before Israel even appeared, of
course, 400 years ago.
William Cowper, the well-known poet and hymn
writer, in the 17th...
1731, anyway, this is what he wrote, O
Israel, of all nations most undone, thy diadem
displaced, thy sceptre gone.
Cry aloud, thou that sittest in the dust.
Cry to the proud, the cruel, the unjust.
Knock at the gates of the nations, rouse
their fears, say wrath is coming and the
storm appears, but raise the swillest cry in
British ears.
And why should he say that 300 years
ago?
Because the Holy Spirit was speaking to him,
something that God wanted to do through this
nation.
In 1815, in a tribute to the Jewish
people, Lord Byron wrote, O weep for these,
the wild dove has her nest, the fox's
cave, mankind their country, Israel but the grave.
And then in 1888, a geologist, you probably
wouldn't know him, John Dawson wrote, No nation
has been able to establish itself as an
Asian in Palestine up to this day.
No national union, no national spirit have prevailed
there.
The motley impoverished tribes have held it as
mere tenants at will, temporary landowners waiting for
those entitled to the permanent possession of the
soil.
Just a secular geologist.
And he left no doubt that he knew
the Jewish people were entitled to that.
I'm going to read you one verse from
one of many that the Wesley brothers wrote
concerning Israel.
Six verses.
The second verse reads this way.
Them, that's Israel, snatched out of the flame,
through every nation sent, this is written 250
years ago, through every nation sent, the true
Messiah to proclaim the universal friend that all
the God unknown may learn of Jews to
adore and see thy glory in thy son
till time shall be no more.
And the Bible specifically speaks of an innumerable
harvest in the book of Revelation that comes
because of the witness of the 144,000
in Revelation chapter 7.
So he's alluding to that.
That's an end time harvest of every tongue,
kindred, tribe and nation that comes because of
end time evangelism.
That's what's on God's heart and I suppose
on our heart.
But the way to achieve it is not
by Christianizing the world alone but by praying
for his firstborn son.
Now turn with me to Romans chapter 11.
May I just bring the reminder that the
very second psalm, the first psalm we have
of 150 is about the word of God.
But the very second one starts off in
this way.
Why is there such a hullabaloo and such
a fuss throughout the world, the Gentile world,
over Jerusalem?
That's Psalm 2.
These are my words.
I've set my son on my holy hill
and that's it.
And you do well to bow before me
and obey my will.
That's what the second psalm, it's not the
third psalm.
So it's importance is in its position and
it's numbered that way when it's mentioned in
the book of Acts.
So the second psalm is telling us 3
,000 years ago of what we're seeing today.
All this hoo-ha about Israel.
Now Romans 11, I want to make the
point that the apex of most letters, when
you come to the doxology in a book,
the writer of it has usually reached the
key thing that he wants to say.
And in this book, the doxology comes in
Romans chapter 11, where you read verse 33,
over the depths both of the wisdom and
of the knowledge of God.
Who's known his mind?
Who's been his counselor?
What does that follow?
It follows verse 31, which is explicitly addressed
to Gentile people.
He said God ain't finished with the Jewish
people.
In fact, just the opposite.
He's got a lot more to come.
That's what the chapter says.
He says in Romans 11, 31, that by
the mercies shown to you, they also may
receive mercy.
In other words, the mercy they need, you're
going to be the channels for it.
You receive mercy from them, they're going to
receive mercy through you, virtually.
And then Paul explodes into praise.
He sees that both Jew and Gentile alike
are so dependent upon God.
So he explodes into that doxology.
Now in verse 13 in this chapter, remember,
the book is addressed to the church in
Rome.
Yeah?
But it's amazing that the church in Rome
has today become the church of Rome.
Important.
The Roman Catholic Church.
And he's writing here about replacement theology.
It didn't begin in the second century or
the third century or the fourth century.
It began in the first century.
That's clear.
He's saying here, God hasn't cast off his
people, which is what the church says today.
And he specifically is addressing this to Gentile
people.
Verse 13, I'm speaking to you Gentiles.
If you're not a Gentile, you're a Jew.
It doesn't matter what your other background.
Only two classes of people, Gentile or Jew,
and both, of course, can become believers in
the Lord.
So he's addressing non-Jewish folk here and
saying specifically, yes, God's laid them aside, they've
sinned, but if he hadn't done that, the
gospel wouldn't have come to you in the
first place.
It's through their transgression the gospel's come to
you.
And for that very reason, there's an indebtedness.
Because they've sinned, hashed it up, you wouldn't
have benefited otherwise.
Theoretically, there'd have been no salvation.
If Jesus hadn't been crucified, you'd have had
no savior.
And in verse 28, verse 28 here, it
says, from the standpoint of the gospel, they
are enemies of the gospel, not the enemies
of God.
Enemies of the gospel, why?
For your sake.
Now there's a lot in that.
It means that they've become the scapegoat, the
point of God's judgment, for the sake of
the Gentiles.
At this very moment, what's happening to Israel
is in the form of a scapegoat, just
as Jesus was the scapegoat for our sin,
the scapegoat for the crucifixion, not the Gentile
nations, but Israel.
That's why they've been scattered.
And there's an indebtedness there, which the church
totally fails to see.
And Paul here is endeavoring to wake us
up to this fact.
Now I want to take you down to
the fact that three times in this chapter,
verse 18, verse 21, verse 25, there's a
reference to arrogance and pride.
Virtually the Western nations say or think, if
Jesus had come to our country, we wouldn't
have crucified him.
If that had happened, there'd have been no
savior.
He was born to die.
He's the lamb slain from the foundation of
the world.
And just as Israel was the custodian of
the gospel, they were also to be the
instrument of crucifixion.
What a thing to be chosen from.
That's what we need to see.
So there's no cause whatever for pride.
He was wounded for your transgression and for
my transgression.
So pride is the hardest thing to contend
with.
And refer to these three times.
In verse 18, don't be arrogant towards the
branches.
That's Israel, natural branches.
Remember that it's not you who supports the
root, but the root supports you.
That is not a reference there to Jesus.
It's a reference of the Abrahamic faith, the
patriarchs.
It's saying that the root of the olive
tree preceded you, and its present tense, your
dependence, is on that root.
And the most important part of any plant,
surely, is the root.
And what attention have we paid to the
root of Israel?
I'll say emphatically that obviously the root has
to be nourished, but the soil in this
kind of picture is the Lord himself.
But the root is the faith that's come
down to us through Abraham and Isaac and
Jacob.
And it says remember, it's the root that
supports you, present tense.
And then if you go down to verse
20, they were broken off with their unbelief,
you stand only by your faith.
Don't be conceited.
Second warning.
But fear.
And here's the warning.
If God did not spare the natural branches,
if he didn't spare the Jewish people who
thought they had it all, what makes you
think he's going to spare you?
I've often thought, what a horrific thing it
was for that temple, that's the first temple,
with all the ornate work that Solomon put
into it, all the gold leaf, all the
figuring, all the wonderful intricate beauty.
God allowed that to be destroyed so there
wasn't one stone left upon another.
That was to the natural branches.
We forget that God can be angry as
well as loving.
And he was so angry with us as
a people.
And then of course if you go down
to verse 25, Paul is saying again, I
don't want you, that's the Gentile people, to
be ignorant, to be uninformed.
And the whole point is that we are
ignorant, generally speaking, not speaking of this church,
but generally, 95, 97% of the church
in Britain are totally blind to this, and
that is appalling.
It's appalling because if we want to know
God's end time purposes, we have to understand
prophecy.
One third of the Bible is prophecy.
2 Peter 1 tells us that we now
have this more certain word of prophecy.
He was speaking there about the transfiguration.
He tells us that we need to, we
do well to pay attention to prophecy.
And he's speaking of not the gift of
prophecy, but the Old Testament.
And we're told it's a light in the
dark place.
We can't understand God's purposes without the light
of God's word.
I was speaking very briefly two or three
weeks ago at the church, and you'll laugh
at this, and the pastor's wife pointed out
to me that I'd done up my shirt,
and the top button was up here, but
the second button I'd done up.
I'd got the first button wrong.
Some of you may know that Derrick Prince
says if you get the first button wrong
on your waistcoat, every other button will be
wrong.
If you don't get Israel right in God's
end time purposes, everything else will be wrong.
It's as simple as that.
And God gave me a practical.
It's the first time in my life I've
ever done that.
I've gone to work with odd shoes before
in the dark, but I've never forgotten to
do up a button, and God was just
giving us a visual picture there.
Now let's go down here.
Then, if God did not spare the natural
branches, neither will he spare you.
So there's some kind of sin here about
which he warns us, that we're not immune
from the kind of judgment that's fallen on
Israel.
That's what he's saying.
And look at what's happening to Israel today.
And, behold then, the kindness and the severity
of God.
To those who fell, severity, but to you,
God's kindness, if you continue in his kindness,
otherwise you too will also be cut off.
And so there's a very sobering warning.
I've never heard anyone teach or preach on
this, because it's a very sobering thing to
mention, isn't it?
My vision is that we don't just go
away and, you know, think about this and
individually pray.
We need to see a movement in Britain,
and within this church in particular, whereby we
take this up as a specific goal, praying
for Britain's eyes to be opened.
Not just praying for, praying more for Britain
than Israel at this point.
That's what I want to see.
I feel we should have prayer meetings on
that level, and we need the unction of
the spirit to cry out to him.
Can't do it in our own theology or
faith.
And I believe if we fast and pray,
then there's some hope.
And I've been amazed to see that this
same kind of vision is being given simultaneously
elsewhere.
There's a video in the course of production
by Hugh Kitson.
Anyone seen Jerusalem, the covenant city?
Yeah, well, that's the same maker is producing
something on this slide.
So God emphasizes here, if we go into
verse 15, he emphasizes, so far from God
having rejected his people, it's just the opposite.
He's got much, much more yet to manifest
in the end time days.
And verse 15 says, if their rejection, their
casting away temporarily by the Lord, nonetheless led
to the reconciliation of the world, just think
what their acceptance will mean, will be.
It'll be nothing less than life from the
dead.
And here it's resurrection life.
And he's speaking for the world, not just
Israel.
Life from the dead.
And as I read scripture, that will be
during the tribulation period.
There are two tribulations.
Jacob's tribulation is not the great tribulation.
Jacob's tribulation is what I read from in
Ezekiel 38, which leads to their salvation.
And then, you know, when they've sobered up
and matured, as I see it, they go
out in the time of the Antichrist.
And of course, it's a time of great
persecution.
But nonetheless, that huge harvest, that Revelation 7
speaks of, the huge multitude that no man
can number, from every tongue, kindred, tribe, and
nation, clothed in white garments, waving palm branches
before the throne, it seems to signify martyrdom.
And Israel is behind that.
Revelation 7, read it when you get home.
And so, this is not something just for
the future, but it's something we need to
have on our hearts at this very moment,
I believe.
So he says, in verse 24, if you
being an awkward lot, this is my vernacular,
you weren't even prepared for the gospel, but
God managed to turn you around and save
you.
If God was able to do that, how
much easier is it going to be for
those who had the Scriptures, they're blinded through
sin and so on, but it's going to
be a lot easier task for him to
graft them back into the olive tree.
And the olive tree, I in no way
believe in the pre-Tribulation rapture of the
Church, I think that's just baloney.
It serves like everything else to put us
to sleep.
Why should the existing Christians escape and Israel
go through the Tribulation?
As I read Scripture, there's only one olive
tree, and if that's been whisked away to
heaven, how can the natural branches be grafted
back into it?
So, that's my viewpoint there too, and I
think it's important to realize that there's no
Scripture that I can read of in the
Word of God that teaches a pre-Tribulation
rapture.
What that shows us is that we don't
have to bother too much.
When all this happens, we'll be in heaven.
Praise God if it's the case, but I
don't think so.
So, I think it's valid to realize that
what we're seeing in the way of what's
happening in Israel being reproduced here in Britain.
My sense of leading is that while we
might be praying about this, that, and the
other, the first thing we need to be
praying about is Britain's repentance over what we
have not done concerning Israel.
Let me recap a bit.
We've had hundreds of authors in this book,
The Vision was there, that's the book, hundreds
of politicians, authors, and poets, and a few
Christians mentioned there, but there are scores of
them.
There was Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Palmerston, so many
who had a real vision for Israel long
before they were even regathered.
Long before.
And now that God's done it.
And Britain, in a sense, was used by
God through Rhys Howells in 1947 when Britain,
as a government, reneged, handed the whole problem
of Israel over to the United Nations.
Rhys Howells of the Bible College of Wales
prayed through, and it was that victory in
prayer that brought Israel back on the map.
After a recount, Britain, not Britain, Israel was
recognized as a nation and given a homeland.
But the point is, the prayer was made
here on British soil.
Yes, it was a tiny little bunch of
Christians in Swansea, but nonetheless, it was British
soil.
It was British Christians.
And it was Britain from 1600 onwards that's
had this vision, passed down from one to
another.
It was Chaim Weizmann, the Jewish scientist in
the First World War, who devised a substitute
for TNT, the explosive.
And he was virtually responsible for the war
turning to Britain's and the Allies' favor.
And it was to that Jewish scientist that
he was asked, what can we do to
repay you?
And he said, afford a homeland for my
people.
And that's when the Balfour Declaration came in.
It was Lord Balfour, the Christian believer, who
drew up and signed that on behalf of
the British government.
And I could tell you all sorts of
things about it.
It's been watered down since.
But that was a promise made, to use
our best endeavors to establish a homeland for
the British people.
Probably you've heard the facts before that one
of the first things we did in about
1920-22, we gave away three quarters of
that land.
And then of the remaining land, we gave
half of that away.
So in other words, what Israel was given
was 12.5% of what was originally
mandated and the will of the United Nations
at the time for Israel to have.
What we call Jordan today was Transjordan, was
originally to be part of Israel's land.
And you read the Bible, you find that
when he fully restores Israel, they're going to
be east of the Jordan, where Gilead were,
and the other tribes.
So Britain has hindered what God has called
her to do.
On the other hand, it was the Lord
that allowed Palestine to come back into British
hands in the First World War.
You remember, it was on the eve of
Hanukkah, 1917, General Allenby walked into Jerusalem with
his hat off.
He didn't ride in on a horse.
And it came back into British hands, not
American hands, not French, but to Britain.
Why?
Because God chose Britain to be the shepherd
nation for Israel.
Now, it's only Christians that can really see
this, believers who know the word of God.
We've had the care, that land, right the
way through to 1947.
And in order to appease Islamic, Arabic efforts,
we gave in to them.
And we're still compromising with them.