Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] It is a very real pleasure for me to be able to speak to you this afternoon. And I should like to read a portion from the word of God, very well known portion, the 137th psalm.
[00:00:18] I will not read all of it, but I will read part of this 137th psalm.
[00:00:26] By the rivers of Babylon. There we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion upon the willows. In the midst thereof we hanged up our harps.
[00:00:40] For there they that led us captive, required of us songs, and they that wasted us, required of us mirth, saying, sing us one of the songs of Zion.
[00:00:55] How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?
[00:01:01] If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her skill.
[00:01:09] Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.
[00:01:14] If I remember thee not, if I prefer not Jerusalem, above my chief joy, we just bow in prayer. Lord, we want to thank thee that when we come to thy word, thou hast made a specific provision for us. We thank thee, Father, that thou has not left us to our own gifts or talents or resources. But for spare speaker and for hearer alike, thou hast provided an anointing, and thou hast made it available to us in a practical and realistic way through the person of the Holy Spirit.
[00:01:59] We together now just stand by faith into that anointing that thou wilt write thy word upon our hearts. And this we ask in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
[00:02:16] I have been asked to speak to you on these two occasions on the subject of the battle for Israel. It's a very good subject, a very good title, because it is so comprehensive.
[00:02:37] What I would like to do this afternoon is to lay a little bit of foundation, and tonight I will actually talk a little more about the conflict.
[00:02:49] Mark Twain, not normally thought to be very sympathetic towards Bible believing christians, concluded a remarkable essay entitled concerning the Jews with these words.
[00:03:09] If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but 1% of the human race.
[00:03:17] It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly, the jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk.
[00:03:44] His contributions to the world's lists of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also a way out of proportion to the weakness, his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world in all the ages, and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the babylonian, and the persian rose filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream stuff and passed away. The Greek and the Roman followed and made a vast noise, and they also are gone. Other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burnt out, and they sit in twilight now or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the jew. All other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?
[00:05:22] It is a good question. Some of you who know literature well will remember that Leo Tolstoy also wrote a similar essay in which he said, the jew is as eternal as God.
[00:05:42] No people, no nation has a story of so much conflict as Israel and yet has endured to this present time.
[00:06:06] What is the secret?
[00:06:10] What is the meaning or significance of this battle, this conflict which has centered upon this nation and its history?
[00:06:24] To me, I believe that there is no other adequate explanation or interpretation other than that the secret and the significance is God.
[00:06:41] It is not to be attributed to natural talent or natural endurability or natural tenacity of character. I think that those qualities may be there in our jewish friends, but there have been other peoples also as characterful and as tenacious that have vanished.
[00:07:12] The fact of the matter is that there is something supernatural about the survival and preservation of the jewish people.
[00:07:27] The prophet Ezekiel put it very simply when prophesying, as it is recorded in Ezekiel and chapter 38 and verse 23, and I will magnify myself and sanctify myself, and I will make myself known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the Lord. Now this he was speaking of in connection with the dispersal of the jewish people to the ends of the earth, and their being brought back to the land and reconstituted a people. And when a great confederation of armies and nations faces them, threatening to annihilate them and eradicate them, God says that in the end he will step in and he will wipe out that confederation.
[00:08:30] And then he says, and I will magnify myself and sanctify myself, and I will make myself known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the Lord, not meaning necessarily that he will save the nations.
[00:08:50] What he means is that the Lord will make it perfectly clear that he is, and that he is the God of all history.
[00:09:00] And that history, the history of the nations, is not some jumble, tangled mess of tangled ends.
[00:09:12] But in fact, God has been working all things out according to the counsel of his own will. We have it again in chapter 39. I will not read all, but I am tempted to from verse 25 anyway. Therefore, thus saith the Lord God, now will I bring back the captivity of Jacob and have mercy upon the whole house of Israel, and I will be jealous for my holy name. And they shall bear their shame and all their trespasses whereby they have trespassed against me when they shall dwell securely in their land and none shall make them afraid when I have brought them back from the peoples and gathered them out of their enemies lands and am sanctified in them in the sight of many nations. And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, in that I caused them to go into captivity among the nations and have gathered them into their own land. And I will leave none of them there anymore. Neither will I hide my face any more from them. For I will pour out my spirit upon the house of Israel, saith the Lord God. Now, this word sanctified does not necessarily mean that he will save the whole people. And you see it in its connection again in chapter 38 and verse 16, where it says, speaking of Gog and Magog, those great anti God antichrist forces. And thou shalt come up against my people, Israel, as a cloud to cover the land. It shall come to pass in the latter days, that I will bring thee against my land, that the nations may know me when I shall be sanctified in thee, O Gog, before their eyes.
[00:11:01] In other words, God is using even anti God antichrist forces to sanctify himself in the eyes of the nations. You see, dear friends, we can have a Billy Graham come to this country or come to western nations and conduct great campaigns and preach the gospel. But by and large, our governments, our national institutions are not touched. They say, the man's an evangelist. That is his job. He's come to preach the Bible. He's come to preach the gospel. That's his job.
[00:11:36] But when you take a nation amongst the nations, that seems to be a very small nation and a very weak nation, and then you see a whole confederation of evil rise up against them, alliances made, treaties made, armed to the teeth, they surround that nation and say, we will liquidate this nation. We will drive it off the face of the earth. And then at the moment of what should be utter defeat, God steps in and turns it to victory. Then something happens in the eyes of the nations. They wonder, what is it? So they say, it is american money.
[00:12:09] It must be.
[00:12:11] Once upon a time it was jewish money.
[00:12:14] Now the Arabs have far more money than all the jewish millionaires put together.
[00:12:20] So then they cannot say. So they say, american money, american support. But God will, in the end, divide America from Israel and leave her on her own.
[00:12:30] And still, as this buildup takes place to these great wars that are predicted in the Bible, when finally Israel stands alone, then God will step in and he will sanctify himself in the eyes of the nation, they will know that Israel, this little nation, this little people in a little territory of no more than 8000 sq mi, this little people and little nation is the focal point of politics, of economics, and a warrior.
[00:13:13] They will become the stone upon which the nations will trip, upon which the nations will be broken.
[00:13:22] God has said it.
[00:13:26] Israel, therefore, is unique in the annals of human history because whether in her fall or in her rise at the moments of her greatest disaster or the moments of her greatest defeat, God has always been using Israel to express and represent spiritual truth.
[00:13:53] Do you understand?
[00:13:56] In other words, think what you believers have learned from Israel going into exile. Think what you believers have learned from where not to build the house of God in Babylon. Think what you believers have learned from some of these great things that the apostle Paul said are examples for us, that we might be admonished upon whom the ends of the ages have come. Now, no other, God has done this with no other nation.
[00:14:29] And the great focal point of controversy is whether God ceased to do this with Israel in the year 70 AD or whether God has continued to have his hand upon jewish history in the last years.
[00:14:51] You get that?
[00:14:53] Thats the bone of contention.
[00:14:57] Most Christians will accept that God has used Israel to express spiritual truth, abiding spiritual truth, eternal truth.
[00:15:09] If you trust the Lord and obey the Lord, then somehow, you know, even if there is much antagonism and conflict, you know, the provision of God and the power of God and the trial triumph of God. And if you disobey the Lord and fall away from the Lord, then you may know prosperity. But in the end comes terrible corruption and disintegration.
[00:15:32] Well, we all agree there, but what has happened since 70 AD, that's the bone of contention. Some say there is no hiss. There is no future for the jewish people. Israel is a political accident. It is the result of a political force called Zionism, now defined by the United nations as racialism, a form of apartheid.
[00:15:56] And so on thats why this afternoon I want to dwell for a few moments on the prophetic word and Israel.
[00:16:09] Now, of course, we cannot possibly go through all that we would like to go through otherwise thered only be one whole meeting beginning now and going right through till tomorrow.
[00:16:22] But we will just touch upon a number of scriptures and just look at them. For instance, if you have your bibles with you, Isaiah, chapter 66 and verse eight.
[00:16:35] Who hath heard such a thing? Shall a lamb be born in one day?
[00:16:41] Shall a nation be brought forth at once? For as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children.
[00:16:53] What a remarkable prophecy. Now, I'm told by some that this refers to some day in the future when all of a sudden God is going to reveal himself to the jewish people and in a single moment of time the whole jewish nation is automatically going to be born of God.
[00:17:11] I have always had the most serious disquiet with this interpretation.
[00:17:17] It does not seem to be borne out by other very important promises and prophecies, but it is a very common one.
[00:17:28] No, my dear friends, I think that this scripture was. This prophecy was fulfilled in May of 1948, when, after 1900 years of exile, of national disintegration, the jewish nation was reconstituted as Israel.
[00:17:54] In one single day.
[00:17:57] One single day a nation was born, a land was born, a nation was brought forth in a single day.
[00:18:08] It is a miracle, even more a miracle when you consider that in that time the two thirds required majority were not to be found.
[00:18:23] And when at first they met together and it looked as if there was a stalemate, the session was adjourned. But when they came back, certain nations had switched and the two thirds majority vote was found. And Israel, the right of the jewish people to be a sovereign nation amongst the sovereign nations of the world, was recognized by the world body. It is an interesting fact that in Swansea, over some seven, eight weeks, those intercessors, centered in the Bible school of Wales, had got together night and day over, I believe, if I'm right, in my memory, seven days of prayer and fasting at different times until on that day they came to the place where God gave them the promise that his angels would take charge of the voting.
[00:19:28] And they cheered and danced and clapped and praised God, even when they knew that there was a stalemate. And when it was adjourned and when it came back, they felt it was one of the greatest days in christian history.
[00:19:45] 50 years to the day before, Theodor Herzl had written in his diary in a hotel room in Basel at the first Zionist Congress in 1897. This day I have founded the jewish state. If I were to announce this publicly, it would be greeted with howls of derision and laughter. But in five years, perhaps maybe ten years, but certainly within 50, the whole world will know it. It was exactly 50 years. But for a week or two, in November of 1947, 50 years after the first Zionist Congress was held in Basel in November of 1897, that Israel was recognized as a sovereign state.
[00:20:46] Now, I have said many, many times, and I say it again, that the reconstitution of Israel must be a serious embarrassment to those folks who believe there is no future for the jewish people.
[00:21:13] One has the greatest sympathy with those who are confused on this matter.
[00:21:18] Some people tell me that it's not being a good calvinist to believe in a future for the jewish people. I say it is being a superb calvinist for the jewish people. Above everyone else are the expression and example of the foreordination and predestinating will and power of God.
[00:21:44] The gifts and the calling of God are without repentance. They are irrevocable. Now, dear friends, if that's so, I find it very exciting.
[00:21:59] David Ben Gurion said something. He wasn't what we know to be orthodox in his religious observance, but he said something which has often intrigued me. He said, those who believe not in miracles are no realists.
[00:22:21] Those who believe not in miracles are no realists.
[00:22:28] The reconstitution of the jewish people is a supreme miracle, in the same way that the reunification of Jerusalem in June of 1967 is another milestone in prophetic fulfillment.
[00:22:44] The survival of the jewish people in the four serious wars that have plagued her 31 years of history is but another evidence of the miraculous power preserving power of God, his hand upon this nation.
[00:23:06] Every time I see flying overhead, living as I do when I'm at home in Richmond in southwest of London, every time I see one of those giant El al Jumbo jets flying over, bearing the israeli national colors and emblazoned on the tail, the jewish national symbol of the star or shield of David.
[00:23:39] I marvel.
[00:23:42] I marvel. You, of course, are all now so used to it, but I marvel.
[00:23:49] 35 years ago, there was no jewish state and no jewish airline.
[00:23:55] Who would have ever thought then, I'm sure if I'd stood up here and said, there will be a jewish airline one of these days going overhead, planes bearing the jewish national colors and with the jewish national symbol on the tail, you would have laughed. 35, 40 years ago, you would have said, he must be nuts.
[00:24:16] Does he believe that there'll be a jewish national when in actual fact, over two thirds of jewry has died in the most horrifying circumstances. Just a few miles from here.
[00:24:30] Every time I hear or see on television or on radio the word Israel, Israel this, Israel that, Israel the other. Israel's government's meeting. The prime minister of Israel's flying here. The defense minister of Israel is going there. The foreign minister of Israel is coming here. I think it's a miracle. Where did these, where did these jewish defense ministers, foreign ministers and prime ministers come from?
[00:24:58] 40 years ago there was no jewish nation. It was not only that. 40 years ago there was no jewish nation.
[00:25:07] It was in the throes of the greatest crisis in jewish history, when it seemed as if all the longings and aspirations of thousands of years was going to be extinguished by nazi brutality.
[00:25:30] The reconstitution of the jewish nation is a coincidence.
[00:25:37] It is the most remarkable coincidence in human history.
[00:25:43] If it is a political accident, it really is a political accident of the most remarkable dimensions.
[00:25:57] The word of God has so much to say about this matter.
[00:26:03] I read, for instance, in Jeremiah and chapter 30 and in verse 17.
[00:26:12] For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy womb, saith the Lord, because they have called thee an outcast, saying, it is Zion whom no man cares for.
[00:26:29] Now I say again, without any apology, I find this cannot be spiritualized.
[00:26:37] How can you spiritualize this verse? I believe in a spiritual interpretation of the Bible, but I want to know how a land is born in a day and a nation brought forth at once.
[00:26:50] How do you spiritualize that?
[00:26:53] How do you spiritualize this?
[00:26:56] Because they say it's Zion whom no one cares for. The history of the jewish people has been simply this. No one has cared for them because they have been dispersed, because they have disintegrated, because they've been exiled into all the nations of the earth. No one has fought for them. No one has secured for them an honorable, dignified living.
[00:27:22] They have been hounded from pillar to post. They have been accused of every kind of evil, very much like many christian missionaries were accused of poisoning the wells, sacrificing little children in secret rites, blood libels, and all the other things that have attached to the jewish people.
[00:27:46] Many christian people do not know the story of Zionism, which is such a dirty word now in so many areas.
[00:27:55] I make no apology for believing that Zionism, though it was largely agnostic and in parts atheistic, was raised up by God.
[00:28:09] It is often forgotten that there was an orthodox element in the beginning of Zionism. In Rabbi Svi Kalisha and other rabbis who were excommunicated for their heretical beliefs that redemption would come in a two stages. They said, the first stage is that we must go back to Israel, build up the promised land. We must secure a livelihood for our people. We must make it economically viable. We must turn the desert into a garden.
[00:28:47] And the second stage will be the supernatural intervention of the Messiah.
[00:28:55] I can't help believing that some of these rabbis had more spiritual sense than some born again christians.
[00:29:06] Suddenly, they seem to have seen something.
[00:29:09] Leopinska, writing in 1882, said this in Russia, he was a russian jew belonging to the intelligentsia.
[00:29:19] He was an assimilationist. He believed that there was no future for the jewish people, that their future lay in assimilation. They must be absorbed by the russian motherlands, by the german motherland, by the austro hungarian motherland. They must take their place with their fellow citizens. And in the onward march of mankind, they would finally come to a place where all religions and labels would fall in a kind of golden age. But the pogroms changed all that. And Leopinska, after he'd hidden in a cellar for a day or two, wrote, to the living, the modern jew is a dead man. To the native born, he is a stranger. To the long settled, he is a vagabond. To the wealthy, he is a beggar. To the poor, he is a millionaire and exploiter. To the citizen, he is a man without a country. To all classes, the jew is a hated competitor.
[00:30:18] When Herzl, Theodor Herzl, issued his first great call to the jewish people, he wrote these remarkable words. I hope I'm not boring you with these things. Nobody has ever thought of looking for the promised land where it really is within ourselves. The promised land is where we shall take it. The promised land where we may at last have hook noses, black or red beards, bow legs without being despised for it. Where we can at last live as free men on our own soil, where the offensive cry of jew may become an honorable appellation, like German, Englishmen, Frenchmen. In short, like all civilized peoples.
[00:31:10] The prophecy of Isaiah said a most remarkable thing. It said, shall a land be born in a day?
[00:31:20] Shall a nation be brought forth at once. For as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth.
[00:31:28] It is amazing when you take the whole story of the jewish exile, 1900 years, that it was literally in the last 50, 60 years when Zionism was born, that suddenly it seemed as if the whole energy, some kind of supernatural energy, entered into jewish experience and culminated in the reconstitution of the nation. Now, I cannot believe that that is some sort of naturally explained phenomenon.
[00:32:03] Theodore Herzl said in his diary, again, when this vision came to me of a revived jewish state, whether I slept, whether I ate, whether I sat, or whether I walked, it was always with me looking over my shoulder, breathing into my ear. It carried me along like some mighty stream. Eliezer ben Yehuda said something just as remarkable, he said, and he, of course, was not an orthodox man in observance, but for those who don't know who Eliezer ben Yehuda is, he is the founder and creator of modern Hebrew.
[00:32:45] Eliezer ben Yehuda, when he was a student at Sarban Sorbonne in Paris, when he heard of the freedom given to the balkan nation, said it was like a vision coming out of heaven before my eyes and a trumpet in my ear, saying, the renaissance of the jewish people on their own ancestral soil.
[00:33:13] Now, was this demonic activity, or is it divine activity?
[00:33:23] The prophet Isaiah says in Isaiah and chapter 42 and verse 16, I will bring the blind by a way that they know not, in paths that they know nothing. I will lead them, this will I do, and I will not forsake them.
[00:33:50] It is my belief that this scripture has been literally fulfilled, although it has tremendous spiritual application, has been literally fulfilled in the leading back of the jewish people to the promised land, to Palestine.
[00:34:11] Blind, many cases agnostic, in many cases radical atheists, they have been led back by a path that they knew not, in a way that they could not understand.
[00:34:27] They have come back. And one of the most remarkable things, if I may take my jacket off, one of the most remarkable things I find in Israel is that I'm always speaking with people who tell me in a kind of embarrassed way that they are agnostic.
[00:34:47] Well, they say, you know, I don't believe.
[00:34:52] And then with great pride, they take me to some public building and show me a text engraved and the base, the foundation stone. And nearly always these texts are something that I will gather them from the north, I will say to the south, and I always say to them, why do you put these scriptures in these buildings? And then they say, well, I dont know.
[00:35:18] Its rather remarkable, isnt it?
[00:35:24] As if deep down in the jew, there is a spiritual awareness deeper than agnosticism.
[00:35:36] There are so many other things that one could say, you see, Zionism came out as the. It was born because no one cared for Zion, no one cared for the jewish people. God said, I will heal her, I will restore health to her. This I will do. To her because they have said, it's Zion for whom nobody cared.
[00:36:07] One never knows quite how much to say in a time like this, or how much not to say.
[00:36:13] But when you start to look at the word of God, you cannot explain it away. In my estimation, I am told by many that the prophecy that we had read to us earlier in Isaiah 43 and verses five and six fear not, for I am with thee. I will bring thy seed from the east and gather thee from the west. I will say to the north, give up, and to the south keep not back. Bring my sons, from far are my daughters from the ends of the earth.
[00:36:48] I am told by some that this was fulfilled in the return from Babylon.
[00:36:54] It has only, I am told, spiritual application today.
[00:36:58] Well, I am very thankful for its spiritual application. Im glad that God gathers his disintegrated, divided and sometimes very fractious people into one. Im talking about christians. Im very glad.
[00:37:14] Im glad that the purpose of God is that we should maintain the unity of the spirit, that we shouldn't fight on silly details.
[00:37:23] We spend our time fighting on things that, after all, are not fundamental.
[00:37:31] It seems to me that there is a very real spiritual application.
[00:37:37] But if I am told that this was fulfilled in the return from Babylon, I have some very serious questions to ask.
[00:37:53] I feel that I will never again be able to put my full confidence in the word of God.
[00:37:59] You mean to tell me that God exaggerates so dreadfully?
[00:38:04] I will say, I will bring thy seed from the east and gather thee from the west. I will say to the north, give up in the south, keep not back. When they came back from Babylon, they only came from the east.
[00:38:18] When did they come from the west? When did they come from the south? All someone says it was poetic license. Well, how much else is poetic license?
[00:38:27] How much else is poetic license? I don't call that good Calvinism.
[00:38:32] I myself a Calvinist. I believe that the word is inspired, its authoritative. If God says something, he means it.
[00:38:42] And this canon of scripture has been given to us in its entirety.
[00:38:47] We may not understand everything, but it is the oracles of the living God.
[00:38:56] Now we'll stretch a point.
[00:39:01] We'll say they came from the east and from the north still leaves the south and the west.
[00:39:11] The ends of the earth. I'm told by clever people was Armenia and the Caucasus mountains. I don't argue about that. I know that they were so big headed in those days that they thought that the end of the world was Armenia and Gibraltar.
[00:39:29] I mean the british isles, poof.
[00:39:34] It wasn't anywhere. And China didn't come into it.
[00:39:42] But what I do know is this, forgive me if my voice goes a bit, because I have a very heavy cold, but what I do know is this, that in your day and generation, our day and generation, they have come from east, from west, from north and from south. They have come from the literal ends of the earth.
[00:40:09] There are 87 different nations represented in Israel. Isn't that amazing?
[00:40:16] Over 80 different languages spoken within that little nation.
[00:40:24] I have often said to some of you, forgive me, those who've heard me before on this matter, how many times we can trust the word of God. When God says so explicitly, I will say to the north, give up. Who would have ever thought that that monolithic giant Soviet Union would have to let go of its jewish citizens? And yet some 68th thousand have so far got out, and many more thousands are destined to come out.
[00:40:57] It is amazing. Then someone says, ah, well, you see, it's Zionism again. You know, you can't trust them.
[00:41:03] Political agitators and swindlers, you can't trust them.
[00:41:09] Well, I'm very interested about, and I will say to the south, keep not back.
[00:41:15] South of Israel and the Saudi arabian peninsula lies the land of Yemen.
[00:41:21] Until 1948, well, much later than that, a feudal kingdom.
[00:41:28] In that land lived a community of 43,000 arabic speaking jews.
[00:41:37] Their tradition goes right back to solomonic days. They have kept the tunes and the dances and much of the liturgy of those earlier days. A most colorful, characterful community. In 1946, they had never seen a car, never seen an airplane, never seen a telephone, never seen any of the accoutrements of modern life. They hadn't even seen a made up road.
[00:42:06] And then in 1946 47, 42,000 of them upped and left their livelihoods and homes behind them and trekked across the desert into the british colony of Aden.
[00:42:22] Her Majesty's government was dumbfounded. They had enough trouble with illegal immigrants up to 1947 into what was then called Palestine. And now suddenly, they had 42,000 very volatile, colorful, arabic speaking Jews on their hands. And the government asked some people to go and investigate, including one dear man who was a believer.
[00:42:49] And they went and they asked, why do you come? And they said, because we are going back to the promised land. Then they said, well, who told you about them? We don't know, but the time has come. They said, news has come to us that God is about to restore the nation. Then one of them said, in the 6th or 7th century, a rabbi stood up in one of our synagogues and said, that before the Messiah came back, we would be transported back to the promised land on the wings of silver birds.
[00:43:31] The amazing thing was this, that the british government made an exception in the case of the yemeni jewish community and allowed the jewish agency to operate the first airlift of Jews to Israel. Over two years, they transported 42,000 Jews from Yemen in an operation called Operation Magic Carpet.
[00:44:01] I will say, to the north, give up, and to the south, keep not back. Here is the interesting thing. Those yemeni Jews were not molested. They were not antagonized, and they weren't threatened. Why? Because the muslim authorities in Yemen said if divine providence dispersed this people from their land to the ends of the earth and took away that land from them because of their disobedience, and now is giving back that land to them, who are we to withstand the will of God?
[00:44:45] But there are other things just as remarkable, if you dont mind being it, being labored in Isaiah 49 and verse twelve. This is a verse I often like to bring to attention of people who tell me that all these scriptures are to be spiritualized. Now, listen.
[00:45:06] Lo, these shall come from far, and these from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Sini.
[00:45:15] May I ask how you spiritualize these from the land of Sini?
[00:45:21] It's a good question.
[00:45:24] There are some modernists in their view of the scripture. They tell us that the land of Sinim is found in northern Egypt.
[00:45:32] Others tell us that it's found in Phoenicia, now Lebanon. But Justinius, that greatest of all jewish scholars of the Middle Ages, hebrew scholar, said, sinim is China.
[00:45:46] And the interesting thing is this, in modern Hebrew, sin means China, Sinit means ChineSe language, and Sini means chinese people. So any modern israeli reading this account will say, lo, these shall come from far, these from the north, and these from the land of the Chinese. Now, it may surprise you to know that there were chinese Jews that came back.
[00:46:13] People get very worked up on this point. They all want to meet a chinese jew. But, I mean, the point is that there are even chinese Jews. Do you know that in the 9th century, we have the first recorded instance of Jews settling in a place called Khotan in western China in Xinjiang? Chinese Turkestan.
[00:46:36] We have, in the 10th century, another record of a community in Canton in south China. But even more remarkable, by the 11th century, we have the record, and it remains to this day, of a whole synagogue in Kaifeng, in the province of Henan in central north China. Now, can you believe that with a jewish cemetery, isn't that amazing?
[00:47:03] Well, you don't seem too surprised, but, I mean, I find it amazing.
[00:47:13] By the year 1937, there were, if my memory is right, about 22,000 Jews resident in China. By the year 1942, that number had risen to something like 36,000, if my memory is right, because Japan expelled all Jews from Japan and Korea and made them go to Shanghai and to China. When the war ended, there were some 42,000 Jews in China, many of them refugees from Russia, who had come over Siberia and down into China, and nearly the whole lot went back to Israel.
[00:47:57] It was literally fulfilled. These from the north, these from the west, and these from the land of the Chinese.
[00:48:07] Now, as you can see, I could go on and on. This is one of the great problems people always tell me. I do go on and on, but I will give you just one other scripture before we break, and you can have a nice cup of tea and recover in time for the next quilling.
[00:48:28] In Amos, chapter nine and verse 14, a very well known prophecy, if you can find it.
[00:48:37] And I will bring back the captivity of my people, Israel. And they shall build the waste cities and inhabit them. They shall plant vineyards and drink the wine thereof. They shall also make gardens and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be plucked up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God.
[00:49:02] Now, Im told that this was fulfilled in the return from Babylon. Now, this is serious, and I mean it. Im not just making a joke. It's serious. If this prophecy was fulfilled in the return from Babylon, as some people tell me it was, it makes out that God is a liar.
[00:49:21] For he said, they shall no more be plucked up out of their land, which I have given them, knowing full well that within a few hundred years, the greatest exile in jewish history was to come to pass, not 70 years, but 2000.
[00:49:38] If, however, it has had its exhaustive fulfillment in our day, its final fulfillment in our day, if those waste cities which have been rebuilt all over the land which bear the name of their old, the old cities, whatever they are, wherever they are, if the land has been planted with vineyards, with the olive grove, with fields, as Amos said it would be all those thousands of years ago, then we have one of the most tremendous promises ever given to a nation. They shall no more be plucked up out of their land, which I have given them, saith the Lord your God.
[00:50:27] That means it does not matter whether America forsakes Israel, whether the economic, the sea forsakes Israel, or whether there is a whole confederation of nations that range against Israel with tremendous power, tremendous manpower, and tremendous nuclear power and tremendous weaponry. The fact remains that God will see to it that they stay in that land right through to the coming of the Messiah.
[00:50:58] I have said to my dear jewish brethren, again and again, people come to me and they say, but aren't you afraid to live in Israel? Bombs and war.
[00:51:13] And I look at them as if they're mad.
[00:51:18] I believe it is the safest place on earth to live for the jew.
[00:51:25] If you're going to be blown up, I'd rather be blown up in Jerusalem.
[00:51:32] And as I am never tired of saying, would you prefer to have four or five years lingering on some sick deathbed with all those weeping relatives around you, or would you rather be blown into the kingdom in one fell swoop?
[00:51:51] Personally, I would prefer to be blown into the kingdom. Bang. When I'm there, almost say, lord, am I really here?
[00:52:02] Wouldn't you prefer that?
[00:52:07] I don't understand people when they get so afraid. I remember when I was a boy, forgive me for this one little anecdote, that he brings it home so well. It's always worth staying in the will of God. I remember when I was a little boy, that the people next door to us fled in the blitz.
[00:52:24] They went right down to the welsh border and bought a bungalow right out in the country.
[00:52:33] I think the nearest neighbor was a mile away.
[00:52:37] And every now and again, they used to come up, and because they had let the house next door and bang on our front door. And when mother came, they used to gush over her. And I remembered, as a little boy, they used to say, oh, you're such a brave woman to stay here with two children.
[00:52:56] How brave you are.
[00:52:59] You should be decorated, they said. And mother used to look, and she wasn't a believer, but mother used to look at them as if they were mad and say, well, what's the point of running away now? The Germans used to come up the river Thames, especially on moonlight nights, following up the Thames, that silver strip, and trying to get to the great west road to bomb the factories.
[00:53:21] And they used to come over the Richmond area, of course, and we used to get it.
[00:53:29] There were one or two saints in the company in which I was saved who used to pray that God would keep every believer in the whole area alive. And as far as I can remember, he did.
[00:53:41] But the remarkable thing was this, that one day, and I've never found out, I'd love to meet the pilot.
[00:53:48] Some german pilot came up the river and I don't know whether he was a conscientious objector or whether he'd been reading his bible or he had a mother who prayed for him. I don't know. He decided not to let his bombs out and he just went up the river, up and up and up and up beyond Oxford and circled round on the welsh border, opened up his bomb doors on what was, after all, just virgin country.
[00:54:21] And one of his bombs landed directly on our neighbor's bungalow and blew it with everything in it to smithereens. Now, they were saved because they were sitting down in an Anderson shelter.
[00:54:37] Now, one should not delight in the catastrophe that falls upon others, but it does teach us a very great lesson, does it not?
[00:54:49] Many people get all wobbly knees and fearful and say, oh, if war is coming, we must go away, and they run into trouble. The safest place on earth is to be within the will of God.
[00:55:01] Never be panicked into doing something. Let God lead you. It's the safest place on earth to be within the will of God. So, my dear friends, I always say to my jewish brethren, you should seriously think about emigrating, because I have no doubt at all that very, very dark and serious time are coming to this land.
[00:55:29] Unless God hears the prevailing prayer of intercessors, I fear very greatly what I see beginning to raise its ugly head in our universities and colleges.
[00:55:45] For me, it bears the same marks as the commencement of Nazism in 1932.
[00:55:58] At that time, people laughed at it. Oh, they said, don't worry, it's nothing. It's nothing.
[00:56:05] But it was demonic.
[00:56:09] And slowly it worked its way through, and the church in Germany did not wake up till it was too late to wake up. And by then it was so severely compromised that it could hardly do anything to withdraw from its involvement. Now, dear friends, there, there's something. That's why there's a battle for Israel. If Israel is the fulfillment of God's word, I understand the battle. It's not flesh and blood.
[00:56:44] It's the hand of God that's in this thing, and the hand of God's enemy is against it.
[00:56:51] That land will be, as I will speak a little more this evening, the land of the final miracles.
[00:57:00] Satan knows it, and he will do everything and anything within his power to stop that coming to pass. So, dear friends, let me finish. The choice the Christian has to either God is behind Israel or he is not.
[00:57:23] Either it is the result of God at work and the fulfillment of God's word, the fulfillment of his program for time, or it is not.
[00:57:41] I say that it is the result of gods work and it is the fulfillment of gods word.
[00:57:50] There may be problems, there may be difficulties, and you must be a very bigoted and prejudiced person if you do not believe that the Palestinian has a right somewhere under the sun.
[00:58:09] There may be problems, there may be difficulties. But if Israel is the fulfillment of gods word and the result of his hand at work, can I, as a believer, do any other than support what he is doing?
[00:58:26] Shall I be found in a position where im embarrassed by what God does? As if I have to explain, explain him away, as if somehow I have to make out that he is being unjust? But I couldn't quite put it like that.
[00:58:40] Shall I oppose or devalue or ignore what he's doing?
[00:58:47] I don't think it's possible.
[00:58:50] Not if you want to hear a well done from your messiah.
[00:58:58] No. Dear friends, the time has come for the christian to rise to the challenge.
[00:59:05] Let us, though we know there are problems, let us give ourselves to prayer, and let us pray for Israel as we have never prayed for Israel before, because very much of our own spiritual well being in the days that lie ahead is linked with what is going to happen in Israel. May God give us the grace and the strength. So to rise to the challenge.
