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Life from the
Dead
B Introductory
remarks: I’m
usually home for Shabbat and the weekend, but I’m happy to be here and can
see it is paying off pretty strongly. I
was thinking as I was listening to all of you, ‘How did it come about for
me to get close to Christian people such as you? The first real [Christian]
person that I met was John - 5 or 6 years ago. As a result of meeting John,
I began to get deeper into this study. I said to myself, “Hey, there’s a
person like John in this world that cares so much for the Jewish people.
Where does this motivation come from?” It was very interesting, so I got
very, very deep into it and joined with more Christians like Chris and
others from New York and all over. It’s
very different from my bringing up. I was born in Jerusalem 53 years ago.
Both my parents were born in the old city of Jerusalem. My grandparents came
to Israel when they were very young from Iran. They did not come because of
business motivation. They just packed up one morning and came – like
others from Iran, Turkey, Morocco, etc. They just had that message that they
had to go. They
had the same message that you have, as you said,
the minute you stepped foot on the land you felt yourself at home.
But they went through very difficult experiences. In the beginning, it was
good, for they felt like home, but then when the BIG immigration came and
the people were more secular, the attitude changed altogether. They began to
feel so rejected. I mean you could sense the absence of God. A
couple of weeks ago as I was reading in the Scriptures, I saw that Ezekiel,
for example, is talking about the regathering from all over the world. Just
after that, he’s talking about outpouring of the Spirit. So what we want
to discuss here is the regathering of the tribes of Israel. God wants to
gather all the people of Israel into the land and that’s when He’s going
to pour His Spirit and revive them. In
Ezekiel’s prophecy of dry bones the first thing that happens is they
gather together, the flesh and the skin comes on them, but they are dead!
They’re standing up as a big army, but they’re dead. It is only after
the wind comes and blows on
them that there is the spiritual development. Most
of the Jews that come into Israel, unfortunately are coming because they
don’t have much of a choice. They come as confused immigrants. It’s very
disturbing that the Jews have to go through much suffering in order to come
to the point of putting their body in Israel. They are not coming there out
of choice. So you have a situation that the Spirit is missing. On
the other hand, I see Christians like you and the Spirit is there. And the
combination of both – the body and the Spirit – is what brings life into
these bones and what makes them a great legion, a great army. Only the
combination of both of them makes it right. That’s what brought us to the point of digging
and searching. I say, how do we put these two together? What do we do?
Again, we went into the Bible and we saw that it is basically there. The
time to break it open so the people could recognize it, hasn’t been until
now, but it is there. Kingdom
Split (sub-topic) Remember
about 2700 years ago Israel was split into two kingdoms, the kingdom of
Judah and kingdom of Israel. (It’s often called Ephraim because the
leadership was from that tribe and it was the largest tribe in the northern
kingdom.) Ever since then, they’ve never got back together. They are two
separate nations, according to the Prophet Ezekiel, and the end of days in
the process of the ingathering, the two nations, Judah and Israel will be
one Kingdom. Ezekiel gives the story of the two sticks being put together
into one. These two are definitely going to come together, but where are
these two now? Judah
has always been the Jews. The word “Jews” came from Judah. Jews is a
word that is hardly mentioned in the Bible. In the five Books of Moses, you
don’t have one mention of the word. It’s always Israel, Israel, Israel.
It’s maybe one time in Zechariah and Nehemiah – very few times, and that
was after they came back from Babylon. So the Kingdom of Judah is the Jewish
people that were gathering around Jerusalem. They stayed with the kingdom of
Judah, and they’re the ones that kept their identity. On
the other hand the Kingdom of Ephraim, the Kingdom of Israel, it says God
sent them to Assyria and they were exiled. And since then, as it says in the
Bible very clearly about 25 times, they lost completely their identity as
being of Israel. What
did you experienced when you landed there in the land? You said you found
there an identity. You felt that you were home. This is where you started. Hidden
Mystery Comes to Light Now
I’m going to show you that you basically are part of it, and you didn’t
even know about it. This is one of the biggest mysteries in the world today.
God has promised in prophecy that He is going to take - - to - I’m trying
to put it in English. It’s like the wheat that when you squeeze it, you
see the seed is inside. You don’t see it when you look on the outside of
it. God is going to squeeze it [this mystery] and it’s going to pop out.
But just like when you look at the wheat, you don’t see the seed that you
make the bread out of, so most men cannot see it yet today. God
gives it in another allegory: He says when you look at the Olive tree, you
really don’t see the olives because the leaves are so overcastting, and in
order to get the olives, what do you do? You shake the olive tree. You shake
it until the olives are coming down. When you look at the tree you don’t
see the olives - just green, green, green.
It’s only when you shake the tree, they come down. And that’s
what’s going to happen. God is going to shake us in such a way that every
little olive that’s on this tree is going to fall down. And
I believe right now that everyone that is sitting in this room is a part of
it, and I’m going to discuss it with you this week-end. Dry
Bones In
Ezekiel 37 when it speaks of the dry bones and the two sticks, you can start
to see yourself as a part of that. It’s talking specifically about two
separate nations, there’s not going to be two separate nations anymore.
There will be ONE NATION IN THE LAND. It’s very important. It’s talking
about the land. He’s talking about the regathering; he’s talking about
the Messiah. He talking about the New Covenant of Peace. This chapter
altogether is surely one of the greatest in the Holy Bible because it has so
much in just one chapter. It shows the dry bones that come together into a
big army, and coming to life when the Spirit blows. And it talks about the
two sticks becoming one. Isn’t
it fantastic? He tells you, “Those
bones are the WHOLE HOUSE OF ISRAEL.” While
we’re talking about the graves here: there is an argument among the rabbis
about whether it’s talking here about the resurrection of the dead. And
indeed, I just want you to know that the year 5760 we are in today which
coincides with the year 2,000, is the year that the cabalists designates as
the year of the resurrection of the dead. Really,
who ARE the dead people? The dead people are us! Because so long as we
don’t have the Spirit and we have the body, or we have the spirit without
the body, we are dead people. [Editor: Hang on, dear reader; it’s going to get
even more interesting.] |
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