Sunday, February 4, 2007

THE LAND

September 4, 1998

Shalom and greetings to you from the Mountains of Ephraim here in Samaria. Every morning I can almost hear the voice of the Prophet Ezekiel echoing over the mountains, hills, ravines, valleys and the waste places (see Ezekiel 36), declaring that the time has come for the redemption of the land. Yes, it still lies before us as a desolate testimony of the judgements of a holy and righteous God. Yet, now in the aftermath of centuries of being trampled underfoot by the nations, and of being rejected and scattered into all the nations, we are beginning to sense the tender mercies and compassion of our God moving deep in our hearts and calling us home. The Holy One, blessed be He, is restoring the hearts of the children to the fathers (Avraham, Yitzchak and Ya’akov) (ref. Malachi 4:6), and causing us to remember our national identity and heritage (see Ezekiel 36 & 37).

If you are a seeker after righteousness, then this word of the prophet Isaiah is meant for you: ”Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, who seek YHVH, look to the rock from which you were hewn, and the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Avraham your father and to Sarah who gave birth to you in pain...” (Isaiah 51:1). If you have “the faith” of Avraham, Paul (Shaul) the apostle says in no uncertain terms that you are one of Avraham’s offspring (sperm): “Therefore it is of faith that it might be according to grace, so that the promise might be sure to all the seed, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all” (Romans 4:16). You are a chip off the old block, or should I say rock; “When he was one I called him, then I blessed him and multiplied him” (Isaiah 51:2). Yes, you are a living manifestation of the multiplied seed of Avraham, the “fullness of the gentiles” promised in the blessing to Ephraim. “But his [Yoseph’s] father [Ya’acov] refused and said, ‘I know, my son, I know. He [Menasheh] also shall become a people, and he also shall be great; but truly his younger brother [Ephraim] shall be greater than he, and his descendants shall become the fullness of the nations [goyim-gentiles]” (Genesis 48:19). The mere fact that we are here, in this generation, is a testimony to the faithfulness of the God of Avraham, Yitzhak, and Ya’acov. Indeed, how immense is the faithfulness of a covenant-keeping God. Truly “How great the day of Jezreel [God’s sowing]” (Hosea1:11)!

Let us be encouraged by the following words: “For behold, days are coming, declares YHVH, ‘when I will restore the captivity of My people Israel and Judah. I will also bring them back to the land that I gave to their forefathers, and they shall posses it’” (Jeremiah 30:2). “In those days the house of Judah will walk with the house of Israel, and they will come together from the land of the north to the land that I gave your fathers as an inheritance” (Jeremiah 3:18).

Ephraim

September 4, 1998

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