As I said, I'm bearing an unusual burden
and speaking it on every occasion.
Putting the Church on alert for a soon
-coming catastrophe.
It's the catastrophe of Israel.
As I am expecting...
I'm looking for an appropriate word.
Debacle.
D-E-B-A-C-L-E.
A complete collapse of the present state.
A probable expulsion from the land again into
the nations.
And triggering reactions throughout all nations where Jews
are.
It's called the time of Jacob's trouble.
It's future and it's near.
Chief source would be Jeremiah chapters 30 and
31.
Where that phrase is drawn.
The time of Jacob's trouble.
Jesus at the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24,
Luke 21 speaks.
Such a time as never was before since
the world began nor will be again.
And at that time we're not cut short.
No flesh would survive.
But for the elect's sake that time will
be cut short.
I think he's speaking of the same event.
And then he warns us here that they
should flee to the mountains or the hills
of Judah.
Pray that it doesn't come on the Sabbath
or in the winter.
So there's every indication that he's talking about
an event that has its inception in Jerusalem
and in Israel.
But it's not confined to Israel for it's
a time of Jacob's trouble wherever Jacob is.
So I'm expecting a massive sifting of Jewish
people throughout the world in one last exile.
One last expulsion in which the majority of
them will not survive.
And a remnant returning to Zion with everlasting
joy upon their heads and mourning and sighing
fleeing away.
That's found in Isaiah 35 and I believe
also Isaiah 51.
All of this would be unnecessary if Israel
had not the destiny and calling that it
does.
To bless all the families of the earth.
To be the center of the locus of
God's theocratic kingdom and rule.
Because out of Zion must go forth the
law and the word of the Lord out
of Jerusalem.
That's not poetry.
That's a literal designation of God's chosen people
and God's chosen location to be the center
of his kingdom throughout the world.
The church has been historically guilty of spiritualizing
such references and thinking that Zion is a
synonym for the church.
But God means the literal holy hill in
the city of Jerusalem.
Psalm 2 speaks of it.
I've set my king on the holy hill
of Zion and given him the nations for
his inheritance.
And yet the heathen rage.
The nations rage and the peoples and the
kings and their rulers take thought against the
Lord and against his anointed to break their
bands asunder.
The world does not want God's kingdom to
come.
They would love to keep the church in
a state of sleepwalk to think that the
kingdom is some kind of interior thing.
The kingdom of God is within you and
that it's which is certainly true in many
ways.
And to disguise or to remove the understanding
of the kingdom as a very literal political
rule of God over his own creation.
The whole of God's salvation history culminates with
the coming of the king who has to
be a descendant of David.
Because he can only be enthroned upon the
throne of David on the hill of Zion
in the city of Jerusalem.
That the law might go forth out of
that place and the word of the Lord
to all nations.
Isaiah chapter 2 speaks of it.
Repeated exactly word for word in Micah chapter
4 from verse 1.
That the mountain of the Lord will be
higher and above all the mountains and hills
and the nations will make their way unto
it.
And come to the God of Jacob that
he might teach us his ways.
So there's a destiny, a remarkable destiny that
affects all nations.
In fact it was God's intention from the
first that Israel should be central to all
the nations of the world.
And what a test for the nations and
even the church in the nations who have
not Israel as their preference.
They would have chosen some other nation.
Israel would not be their choice.
Israel's track record leaves much to be desired.
God doesn't mince words.
You blaspheme my name and every nation will
have driven you.
But that does not negate nor nullify God's
call, promise and gift and calling.
The gifts and callings of God are irrevocable.
He does not take them back again.
He does not disqualify them.
A nation doesn't have to rise to a
standard in order to attain to it.
He supplies the standard.
That standard is the new covenant.
Israel is notorious as a covenant breaking nation.
But in the end when they come to
a place of everlasting joy, not the least
of the reasons for it is that he
has made an everlasting covenant with them.
Why everlasting?
Because it shall not again be broken.
Why will it not be broken?
Because it does not wait upon Israel's faithfulness
to keep it.
He who gives it also keeps it.
He writes it in their hearts and in
their understanding that they will all know God.
Is all this familiar?
Is all this strange?
Is all this uncomfortable?
All this is the God who has mercy
upon whom he will have mercy and chooses
whom he will choose.
Because the issue of God's choosing is the
issue of God.
So if you have any complaint, if Jews
rub you the wrong way, if you have
no native disposition for them, something is amiss
in your relationship with God for nothing measures
that relationship more accurately than your understanding, your
disposition, and your heart toward the people whom
God has chosen.
Now, tonight I've been brooding a bit and
I'm in a mood I believe that the
Lord has established appropriate to the text that
I think he wants us to consider which
is Isaiah 53.
As we all know, that is the greatest
classic statement of the suffering servant Jesus.
But you may not know that Jewish authorities
and commentators, rabbis, sages have disputed the Christian
interpretation of Isaiah 53 as pertaining to our
Messiah and say that no, it pertains to
Israel, that Israel itself is a suffering servant
and has blessed the nations through its suffering.
Well, I think that if that's not been
true in the past, it will be true
at the end.
There's a way in which in the wisdom
of God I believe that the nation that
is called to be a son, the first
use of that word in Exodus chapter 4
is for Israel.
In Moses' confrontation with Pharaoh, let my son
go that he might serve me.
And so this intention of God yet remains.
Israel is called to be like its Messiah
and Lord before it, also a servant's son.
For its call is to be a nation
of priests and a light unto the world.
Do you believe that?
Or do you think it's needful?
I would say that the lamentable condition of
the world today is to a great extent
the consequence of Israel's failure to fulfill that
calling.
Remember that one out of the twelve tribes
was exclusively a priestly tribe.
It had no inheritance in the land.
God was its inheritance.
And its function was to serve the nation
and stand before God on behalf of the
people, to teach the law, to teach the
people the difference between the sacred and the
profane.
God did not think it lavish to take
one of twelve tribes and give it no
other function but an exclusive priestly function to
mediate the reality of God to the whole
of Israel.
You can watch the rise and fall of
Israel's fortunes throughout its history by just examining
the condition of its priests.
For as the priests, so also the people.
So why am I saying that?
Because the same principle by which God would
take one of Israel's twelve tribes and give
it the exclusive designation and service of a
priestly kind and of a teaching kind, God
intends that for the entire nation, to all
the nations.
You better get lined up with the saints
if this is God's program and design and
not oppose it, but welcome it, anticipate it.
And before I finish tonight, I hope to
indicate how graphically you're going to have part
in this whole concluding saga.
There's a certain requirement for priestly servant sons.
It's called suffering.
That should not be a novelty or an
unusual thought for those of us who feel
that call ourselves.
And indeed, it is the call of the
church to sonship, to servanthood, to priestliness, not
from a racial or genealogical origin, but in
the form of the son of God, a
Melchizedek priesthood.
And we know that Jesus learned obedience to
the things that he suffered.
There's a necessary suffering.
There's a humiliation that precedes the exaltation that
God bestows on servant sons who are honored
to bear his name and his word and
the revelation of himself to the nations.
Israel is not in the condition to bless
all the families of the earth.
I don't know if you've noticed.
I don't know how informed you are.
I don't know if you're reading the Jerusalem
Post.
I don't know what information you're getting.
But I can tell you that anyone who
is a student of the state of Israel
has any kind of sympathy is coming increasingly
day by day to a kind of sad
and melancholy sense of profound disappointment in the
things that are taking place morally, ethically, in
the conduct and the life of a nation
whose back is forced to the wall, surrounded
by enemies who are determined to her destruction
and having within its own borders a Palestinian
presence that has exactly the same intention.
God is the author of Israel's predicament.
And I would say that the whole state
of Israel has been established by the grace
of God or by His, and I always
grope for this word, not His providence, not
in order to succeed but to fail, to
demonstrate to Jews that they are not in
themselves capable of establishing a nation state that
will bless the nations of the world.
It has got to be God's exclusive work.
And for that reason, this self-sufficient people
will be brought down into the place of
death before they will be raised up to
a place of resurrection and newness of life,
alone by which they can fulfill the promise
of God and the intention of God throughout
their history.
So I've started to read Isaiah 53 with
a double application, one for Jesus, which is
certainly and unquestionably accurate, but also with a
slight substitution of the pronouns from a singular
to a corporate, there'll be so much that
will be suggestive of what I believe is
going to happen to Israel that will be
required to follow its Lord in a road
to Calvary.
And maybe on that road, when they taste
something of the rejection and suffering which their
Lord experienced before them, which they have historically
rejected, it will open their understanding in a
way that nothing but their own mutual experience
would have fitted them to see.
How are we doing so far?
Catch the control tower, over.
Testing.
Are we okay?
Yeah?
Am I English is clear?
Sensible?
Not elaborate?
Okay.
You know that Isaiah 53 properly starts in
Isaiah 52, where I have an italics over
verse 13, the suffering servant.
See, my servant shall prosper, he shall be
exalted and lifted up, and shall be very
high.
Anyone who knows Israel's final destiny knows that
that is almost as descriptive of a restored
nation as it is of the Lord.
It's the exaltation that follows humiliation.
Nations will come to Israel, will bring their
riches.
Kings and queens will bear the last of
Israel's exiles on their shoulders and suckle them.
Ships of Tarshish will bring their wealth, their
tribute, the honor.
God says Israel will be a diadem in
his hand.
It will be a jewel.
He'll call them by a new name.
The city of Jerusalem will be called the
city of righteousness.
That nation that refuses to come up annually
to the feast of tabernacles will suffer a
curse.
If it still allows its ancient anti-Jewish
disposition to keep them from the recognition of
a nation which God has exalted.
Not because it deserves it, not because it's
a reward for services rendered, not because it
has anything to do with the merit of
Israel in itself, but simply the statement of
a God who lavishes on a prodigal and
returning son a ring, a garment, and a
feast.
Now, we may have the disposition of the
elder brother who's not too happy about that,
who begrudges the father's lavish reception of a
son who had wasted all his inheritance.
But the father said, son, speaking to the
elder, this is one who has come back
from the dead.
Why don't you rejoice and enter the party?
Why couldn't he?
What was in his heart that was not
like the father?
Why was he envious and jealous?
What kept him from enjoying the return of
the prodigal brother?
There's something in the heart of the church
for whom that parable is intended.
And you know what I can say about
that?
There's nothing that searches the heart of the
church and reveals the truth of its condition
than the subject of Israel itself rightly considered.
And I hope you understand when I keep
referring to Israel, I do not mean the
present political state.
I'm talking about the nation, not the state.
The state is, God is not under obligation
to preserve this political entity.
It was an expedient, a provision to set
in motion the things that must necessarily take
place in the Middle East and in Jerusalem
that sets Israel on its road to Calvary.
But when I talk about Israel, I'm talking
about that people that God said will never
be abolished so long as the sun gives
its light and the moon holds its course
in the stars.
They are established before him forever.
Deuteronomy 32.8 says that when God established
the numbers of the nations, he did so
in terms of the sons of Israel.
I've never heard anyone preach that text.
This one allusion to the significance of Israel
with reference to all nations.
And there'll never be peace for all nations
until Israel is fitted in to the schema
of God where nations will bow and be
broken in their arrogance and opposition to God
by their surrender to the center that he
has established in that nation and with that
people.
Now, I suppose you think I'm saying all
this because I'm Jewish.
No.
I've been Jewish for 71 years and I'm
only holding these Jews for the last 10,
12, 15 years by the grace of revelation
and understanding given me.
If God had chosen Pygmies, I would be
celebrating Pygmies tonight as God's chosen people and
as the epicenter of this whole mode of
coordinating the nations and submission unto himself.
God is going to rule from the throne
of David, from the holy hill of Zion.
Eat your heart out.
What can I do to accommodate you?
You may be as tough as my Anglo
-Saxon audiences if your background is Dutch or
German.
That's Aryan, Anglo-Saxon.
You don't know how deep it is.
You don't know.
And I just stumbled across an article in
a Christian magazine on the history of Jews
in South Africa and there is a remarkable
history of anti-Semitism and according to the
article, I'm just a newcomer to the subject
here, it says that the Afrikaners were more
disposed to have a bitterness toward the Jew
than the English.
In fact, the Afrikaners thought that the Jew
was part of the English design to subvert
their South Africa.
Whatever it is, you need to search your
heart because I believe that this people on
their road to Calvary will be coming right
through Bindura, Zimbabwe.
God is going to sift them through all
nations because their ultimate destiny is to all
nations.
But in sifting them, by uprooting them and
moving them through the nations in a state
of chastisement described in Isaiah 53, he also
sifts the nation itself and the church within
the nation.
How do you know about it?
Because Matthew 25 persuades me that God's first
judgment when he is seated as king after
the restoration of a remnant who returned to
Zion with everlasting joy upon their heads, mourning
and sighing, fleeing away, sifts the sheep from
the goats throughout the nations on one question
only, What did you do with the least
of these, my brethren?
Well, if that's true, according to Amos 9,
that you will sift this nation through all
nations and not allow one colonel to fall
to the ground.
If it's true, according to Ezekiel 20, that
it's through the wilderness of the nations that
they ought to be sifted, not the great
urban centers of Johannesburg where Jews like to
have their affluence and dwelling, but the out
-of-the-way places they would not have
chosen, what makes you think that Bindura, Zimbabwe,
is one of those places?
Just my presence tonight.
That's all.
And because your location has all the earmarks
appropriate to their being sifted, brought down dirt
roads and dark areas that are not illumined
and tracking through places where a Jew would
never have thought to set his foot.
So what will you do when they come
upon you in their untaught condition, suddenly uprooted
and totally disconcerted and agitated and confused and
wondering how again in the same century there
could be yet another holocaust, global, worldwide?
Are you prepared to take them in?
Will you take them in?
Or will you say, Lord, Lord, when did
I see you?
Naked, thirsty, hungry and in prison.
Only to answer, if you did not do
this for the least of these, my brethren,
you did it not unto me.
And I tell you, saints, they are going
to become the least.
Do you know why?
Because they're going to become the most.
Because they've got to go all the way
down in the most profound humiliation, like the
Lord before them, in order to be exalted
in a place above all nations, without it
affecting their ego and giving them a sense
of superiority over gentile nations by which they
would lord it over them rather than serve
them in a priestly humility.
So verse 14 of Isaiah 52, just as
there were many who were astonished at him,
or let me say, astonished at them, so
was their appearance beyond human resemblance and their
form beyond that of mortals, so shall they
startle many nations and kings shall shut their
mouths because of them for that which had
not been told them they shall see and
that which they had not heard they shall
contemplate.
How can this be a statement of the
effect of the crucifixion of Jesus upon kings
and nations when virtually the kings and nations
of the world today are not startled, are
not astonished, have not been apprehended?
In fact, it's a moot question whether even
those nations that think themselves Christian have rightly
understood and appropriated the holocaust of Jesus.
I think that God is going to set
it before nations again.
They're going to see the drama again enacted
before their faces through a people who have
become the least of his brethren.
They're going to see the whole drama of
being without any appearance that they should be
desired, marred more than any man, rejected and
despised.
It will be a complete reenactment of the
road to Calvary which Jesus himself trod.
And not only will kings and nations be
startled and understand what had been enacted 2
,000 years ago and is yet available for
their salvation now, but Israel itself will be
startled and astonished.
Their own experience, resembling that of the Lord
before them, will give them pause to consider
what they had 2,000 years ago rejected
and keep rejecting until this day.
For who has believed what we have heard
and to whom is the armor of the
Lord been revealed?
For he grew up before him like a
young plant, like a root out of a
dry ground, and he had no former majesty
that we should look at him.
This sounds now like Israel in some future
time looking back at that crucifixion of their
suffering servant Lord whom they had rejected and
now in the light of the suffering through
which they have passed beginning to understand the
mutuality of their experience and his.
There was nothing in his appearance that we
should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men, a
man of suffering acquainted with grief and as
one from whom others hide their faces.
He was despised and we held him of
no account.
This sounds very much like a future recognition
that Israel will not come to unless it
in some measure walks the same road to
Calvary.
Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried
our diseases, yet we had accounted him stricken,
struck down by God and afflicted, but he
was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our
iniquities.
Upon him was the punishment that made us
whole and by his bruises we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray, we've
all turned to our own way and the
Lord has laid on him the iniquity of
us all.
This is a recognition to which Jewish people
have not yet come.
It's a recognition to which they will come
and I believe that the key to their
coming to it is that they must in
some measure experience his suffering, his rejection, be
found despicable, unlovely, unwanted, acquainted with grief and
then understand that he fulfilled the same purposes
for their salvation and by it come to
salvation.
He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet
he did not open his mouth.
Probably they will open their mouths, they'll grumble,
they'll complain, they'll knock their fists at heaven,
they'll wonder why it is that in the
same century a second holocaust, they'll not be
silent, but they'll appreciate his silence and the
fact that they themselves were unable to hold
their own mouths.
He'll stand out in remarkable contrast as the
Lamb of God which they themselves are not.
He was cut off, it says, from the
land of the living, stricken for the transgression
of my people.
The word cut off is also to be
found in Ezekiel 37.
We are cut off.
We are without hope, we are as dry
bones.
If you read that great prophetic chapter in
Ezekiel, it's a statement of Israel's future because
that acknowledgement has never been historically made.
Even the Nazi holocaust did not bring an
acknowledgement on the part of world Jewry.
We are cut off.
We are without hope, we are as dry
bones.
This experience that is coming, of which Jesus
himself spoke, referred to also in Daniel, spoken
also in Jeremiah, alluded to in Psalms, referred
to by other prophets, is a future and
concluding event in the prophetic salvation history of
God.
And it's going to be played out in
all nations.
And it will bring that people to a
place where they will cry out, like the
Lord.
He was cut off, we are cut off.
Out of the land of the living.
We are without hope, we are as dry
bones.
And when God hears that acknowledgement for which
he's waiting, he's released to raise Israel from
that death by sending a son of man
to prophesy to those bones that they might
live.
Do you know who that son of man
is?
Who has the authority to speak for God,
as God, with a creative word that can
raise the dead?
Because Paul says, what does it mean that
Israel should be raised from the dead?
It will be life for all nations.
The issue of Israel's restoration from the death
that is coming is the issue of life
for all nations.
But Israel itself must first be brought to
life as the Lord was brought to life.
It's the reenactment of the whole drama of
which Jesus was the prototype.
And the same power that raised him will
raise them.
It's the first resurrection of a nation, or
at least a remnant of the nation, that
will stand for the entire nation.
But he himself does not speak the words
of life.
A son of man speaks it.
You wonder why he didn't take the occasion
himself.
It's because that's our place.
The son of man, in my opinion, is
a picture of the church that has come
of age in the last days.
That has come to prophetic stature.
That sees what God sees, even reluctantly, had
it been brought out and down into the
midst of the bones.
It has to have a faith to believe
that those bones can live, and a faith
that desires to see those bones live.
If there's something rankling in the heart of
that prophetic son of man that has not
that desire, and he wants exclusively to be
the object of God's whole devotion, it will
not be a word that will raise them.
It has to be with an ultimate faith,
with an ultimate agreement in God's desire to
raise that people from its death.
And it has to be a faith that
works by love.
See what the requirement is for us?
It's a radical requirement, and an ultimate requirement.
And if we don't meet that, if we
don't have any intention for it, no desire
for it, are unwilling to be brought into
it, as the one people who can speak
such a word in the moment that the
Lord commands it, we will be eternally, what
shall I say?
Embarrassed.
We will suffer an eternal grief for having
fallen short of the glory of God and
been satisfied with a modest Christianity that did
not make such requirement upon us, for we
did not desire it.
We live beneath God's intention and God's glory,
and therefore we will have forfeited the reward
that would have been commensurate with having come
into the maturity and prophetic stature that would
have constituted Israel's deliverance and salvation.
So long as you're in Isaiah, take a
look at Isaiah 35.
My italic statement at the commencement of that
chapter is, the return of the redeemed to
Zion.
The wilderness and the dry land shall be
glad, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom.
The crocus shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with
joy and singing.
The glory of Lebanon shall be given to
it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.
Isn't it remarkable?
God starts with nature.
God starts with creation.
What is happening that nature, dumb, insensate, unable
to speak, can actually experience something and rejoice
for something that is happening on its very
soil?
What makes it joyous?
We're going to find out.
It's a people being moved upon it and
through it, who are on a holy path
to Zion.
It is the highway of holiness through the
nations, through the dry lands, through the grasslands,
through the least inhabited places, the out of
way places.
The desert shall rejoice and blossom.
And what an embarrassment for us.
That dumb nature shall rejoice and we be
glum?
That nature should be moved and we be
unmoved?
For they shall see the glory of the
Lord, the majesty of our God.
Something's going to happen in that future time
that reveals God's glory and God's majesty.
For Israel itself must see God as God.
For they do not know him as God
and require a revelation, both of his majesty,
his power, and his glory that shall be
revealed and given to them on the highway
of holiness in the backward, out of the
way places of the wilderness of nations.
Have I prayed?
Yeah.
Then there's a break in the text and
God seems to be addressing someone that is
not Israel itself.
Strengthen the weak hands and make firm the
feeble knees.
Say to those who are of a fearful
heart, Be strong, do not fear.
Here is your God.
He will come with vengeance.
With great recompense, he will come and save
you.
This is not Israel speaking.
This is something spoken to Israel who is
evidently so disconsolate, so broken, so dejected, so
hopeless that they are about to perish except
that a word comes to them in their
wilderness place.
The study of the holocaust shows that men
who were weaker survived, men who were physically
stronger.
Stronger men died while weaker ones survived and
the difference was that one had hope and
the other was without hope.
Hope is a remarkable life-sustaining virtue but
it needs to be imparted to a people
who have been so reduced and so without
hope that it must come to them from
another who is somehow near them and with
them in the place of their hopelessness, in
the place of their wilderness, in the place
where God has them move.
And could say to them who are of
a fearful heart, Be strong and do not
fear.
Your God will come with vengeance, with recompense.
He will come and save you.
That has got to be more than just
well-wishing.
It's got to be more than just a
nice, polite word or it will fail.
It has got to be a prophetic word.
It's got to be a word that when
they hear it, it's an event for them.
Something happens as is described here.
For then the eyes of the blind shall
be opened and the ears of the deaf
unstopped.
Then the lame shall leap like a deer
and the tongue of the speechless sing for
joy.
For water shall break forth in the wilderness
and streams in the desert and burning sand
shall become a pool and the thirsty ground
springs of water, etc.
Dear saints, this is not poetry.
This is literal, nuts and bolts, factual description
of something that is yet future and must
take place or there will be no Jewish
survival as this nation is uprooted and scattered
again through the wilderness of the nations.
Who will be there in that wilderness to
speak these words that will constitute for a
people who would otherwise perish?
Hope that they will leap and the blind
will see before the Lord comes to deliver
and to save them if it is not
you.
You see what God is after?
He is after not only a nation that
is restored out of death and sin and
apostasy but a church that is raised up
to a maturity and use that it never
would have sought nor attained except that Israel
required such a people to save them.
Can you guys follow this?
Are we in a condition today to speak
like this?
Do we know God so well as to
say your God will come?
How do we know that?
Because we have had a wilderness experience before
them.
We have been brought to a place of
destitution.
We have had our faith shaken.
We have experienced a kind of hopelessness that
God can produce even in the midst of
our ordinary circumstances.
In order that we should know Him and
be able to convey the truth of Him
who would otherwise perish unless someone could say
with conviction your God will come.
Mere Sunday pew sitting will never attain this.
Ten thousand Sundays of proper religious Sunday attendance
will never attain this.
Something is going to have to be radically
altered about the whole framework and knit of
our present religious life because it is not
conducive it does not lend itself to raising
up a people of this kind of prophetic
stature and authority.
We may have to go again from house
to house daily breaking bread.
We may have to give God the opportunity
to form this kind of character and this
kind of faith in a quality of relationship
and an intensity of life together that offends
us.
We like our privacy.
We like a Christianity that is reduced to
a Sunday service and a mid-week Bible
study.
We think we are doing God exceptional service
to come out on a Monday night.
Can you understand?
Israel is God's provision for the church all
the more and especially because she is in
this despicable condition.
There is a destiny for us as there
is a destiny for her and neither they
nor we will attain to it independent of
each other.
We are in something together and God has
sent you a queer man weeks, months or
years I don't know when this will take
place I don't think it is too distant
to begin to sound to you those things
that you need now to consider that when
they come and it will be abruptly when
the bottom falls out with them it will
be with suddenness that you will not be
taken by surprise and find yourself all together
unprepared to be for them what you want.
It is too late then to take the
challenge seriously it needs now to be considered.
Well, it says in verse 8 A highway
shall be there, it shall be called the
holy way the unclean shall not travel on
it it shall be for God's people no
traveler not even fools shall go astray no
lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous
beast come upon it I think the ravenous
beast are not lions they are men in
a Nazi like condition who if they had
the ability would do again to Jews what
they did 50 years before.
God will not allow ravenous beast to be
upon this, this is a holy highway and
it is going to go through Zimbabwe how
do you know that?
Because I am in Zimbabwe it is going
to go through South Africa because I have
just come from South Africa I have been
in New Zealand, Australia Japan, Philippines it does
not matter where I am God says I
will sift you through all nations better to
be prepared to anticipate them and it should
not take place than it does take place
and you find yourself unable to respond if
they are driven through nations by a relentless
pursuit of a persecution that demands their annihilation
what will be the consequence to those who
take them in and are caught doing so
this is not going to be some idle
casual hospitality this is going to be something
extended at great personal risk as it was
for Corrie Ten Boom and she was Dutch
in fact Holland gives us more encouragement about
a people who are willing to extend themselves
at risk than perhaps any other European nation
during the Hitler time and they are going
to have yet another shot at it I
will be there in April speaking the same
message who, what Gentile however impressive a Christian
is going to extend themselves for a people
in that condition when if they are caught
doing so it means you know what Paul
says in Romans 11 that by your mercy
they might obtain mercy when have you ever
extended mercy to a Jew when has a
Jew ever needed mercy until now have you
a mercy to give as I said I'm
bearing an unusual burden I'm speaking it on
every occasion putting the church on alert for
a soon coming catastrophe it's the catastrophe of
Israel as I am expecting I'm looking for
an appropriate word debacle a complete collapse of
the present state a probable expulsion from the
land again into the nations and triggering reactions
throughout all nations where Jews are it's called
the time of Jacob's trouble it's future and
it's near and a chief source would be
Jeremiah chapters 30 and 31 where that phrase
is drawn the time of Jacob's trouble Jesus
at the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24, Luke
21 speaks of such a time as never
was before since the world began, nor will
be again and if that time were not
cut short no flesh would survive but for
the elect's sake that time would be cut
short I think he's speaking of the same
event and then he warns us here that
they should flee to the mountains, the hills
of Judah, pray that it doesn't come on
the Sabbath or in the winter so there's
every indication that he's talking about an event
that has its inception in Jerusalem and in
Israel but it's not confined to Israel for
it's a time of Jacob's trouble, wherever Jacob
is so I'm expecting a massive sifting of
Jewish people throughout the world in one last
exile, one last expulsion, in which the majority
of them will not survive and a remnant
returning to Zion with everlasting joy upon their
heads and mourning and sighing fleeing away that's
found in Isaiah 35 and I believe also
Isaiah 51 all
of this would be unnecessary if Israel had
not the destiny and calling that it does
to bless all the families of the earth,
to be the center the locus of God's
theocratic kingdom and rule, because out of Zion
must go forth the law and the word
of the Lord out of Jerusalem that's not
poetry that's a literal designation of God's chosen
people and God's chosen location to be the
center of his kingdom throughout the world the
church has been historically guilty of spiritualizing such
references and thinking that Zion is a synonym
for the church, but God means the literal
holy hill in the city of Jerusalem Psalm
2 speaks of it I've set my king
on the holy hill of Zion and given
him the nations for his inheritance and yet
the heathen rage the nations rage and the
peoples and the kings and their rulers take
thought against the Lord and against his anointed
to break their bands asunder the world does
not want God's kingdom to come they would
love to keep the church in a state
of sleepwalk to think that the kingdom is
some kind of interior thing, the kingdom of
God is within you which is certainly true
in many ways and to disguise or to
remove the understanding of the kingdom as a
very literal political rule of God over his
own creation the whole of God's salvation history
culminates with the coming of the king who
has to be a descendant of David because
he can only be enthroned upon the throne
of David on the hill of Zion in
the city of Jerusalem that the law might
go forth out of that place and the
word of the Lord to all nations Isaiah
chapter 2 speaks of it repeated exactly word
for word in Micah chapter 4 from verse
1 that the mountain of the Lord will
be higher and above all the mountains and
hills and the nations will make their way
unto it and come to the God of
Jacob that he might teach us his ways
so there's a destiny a remarkable destiny that
affects all nations in fact it was God's
intention from the first that Israel should be
central to all the nations of the world
and what a test for the nations and
even the church in the nations who have
not Israel as their preference they would have
chosen some other nation Israel would not be
their choice Israel's track record leaves much to
be desired God doesn't mince words you blaspheme
my name in every nation where I have
driven you but that does not negate nor
nullify God's call promise and gift and calling
the gifts and callings of God are irrevocable
he does not take them back again he
does not disqualify them a nation doesn't have
to rise to a standard in order to
attain to it he supplies the standard that
standard is the new covenant Israel is notorious
as a covenant breaking nation but in the
end when they come to a place of
everlasting joy not the least of the reasons
for it is that he has made an
everlasting covenant with them why everlasting?
because it shall not again be broken why
will it not be broken?
because it does not wait upon Israel's faithfulness
to keep it he who gives it also
keeps it he writes it in their hearts
and in their understanding that they will all
know God is all this familiar?
is all this strange?
is all this uncomfortable?
all this is the God who has mercy
upon whom he will have mercy and chooses
whom he will choose because the issue of
God's choosing is the issue of God so
if you have any complaint if Jews rub
you the wrong way if you have no
native disposition for them something is amiss in
your relationship with God for nothing measures that
relationship more accurately than your understanding, your disposition
and your heart toward the people whom God
has chosen now tonight I've been brooding a
bit that I'm in a mood I believe
that the Lord has established appropriate to the
text that I think he wants us to
consider which is Isaiah 53 as we all
know that is the greatest classic statement of
the suffering servant Jesus but you may not
know that Jewish authorities and commentators, rabbis sages
have disputed the Christian interpretation of Isaiah 53
as pertaining to our Messiah and say that
no it pertains to Israel that Israel itself
is a suffering servant and has blessed the
nations through its suffering well I think that
if that's not been true in the past,
it will be true at the end there's
a way in which in the wisdom of
God I believe that the nation that is
called to be a son the first use
of that word in Exodus chapter 4 is
for Israel in Moses' confrontation with Pharaoh, let
my son go that he might serve me
and so this intention of God yet remains
Israel is called to be like its Messiah
and Lord before it also a servant son
for its call is to be a nation
of priests and a light unto the world
do you believe that?
or do you think it's needful?
I would say that the lamentable condition of
the world today is to a great extent
the consequence of Israel's failure to fulfill that
calling remember that one out of the twelve
tribes was exclusively a priestly tribe it had
no inheritance in the land God was its
inheritance and its function was to serve the
nation and stand before God on behalf of
the people to teach the law to teach
the people the difference between the sacred and
the profane God did not think it lavish
to take one of twelve tribes and give
it no other function but an exclusive priestly
function to mediate the reality of God to
the whole of Israel you can watch the
rise and fall of Israel's fortunes throughout its
history by just examining the condition of its
priests for as the priest, so also the
people so why am I saying that?
because the same principle by which God would
take one of Israel's twelve tribes and give
it the exclusive designation and service of a
priestly kind and of a teaching kind God
intends that for the entire nation to all
the nations you better get lined up with
the saints if this is God's program and
design and not oppose it but welcome it,
anticipate it and before I finish tonight I
hope to indicate how graphically you're going to
have part in this whole concluding saga there's
a certain requirement for priestly servant sons it's
called suffering that should not be a novelty
or an unusual thought for those of us
who feel that call ourselves and indeed it
is the call of the church to sonship
to servanthood, to priestliness not from a racial
or genealogical origin but in the form of
the son of God, a Melchizedek priesthood and
we know that Jesus learned obedience to the
things that he suffered there's a necessary suffering,
there's a humiliation that precedes the exaltation that
God bestows on servant sons who are honored
to bear his name and his word and
the revelation of himself to the nations Israel
is not in the condition to bless all
the families of the earth, I don't know
if you've noticed I don't know how informed
you are I don't know if you're reading
the Jerusalem Post I don't know what information
you're getting but I can tell you that
anyone who is a student of the state
of Israel has any kind of sympathy is
coming increasingly day by day to a kind
of sad and melancholy sense of profound disappointment
in the things that are taking place morally,
ethically in the conduct and the life of
a nation whose back is forced to the
wall, surrounded by enemies who are determined to
her destruction and having within its own borders
a Palestinian presence that has exactly the same
intention God is the author of Israel's predicament
and I would say that the whole state
of Israel has been established by the grace
of God or by his, and I always
grope for this word not his providence not
in order to succeed but to fail