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Israel

For the last two months we have been following the Book of Nehemiah in our weekly Shabbat celebrations. The parallels between those days nearly 2,500 years ago and our times are striking and helpful to us all. Nehemiah was a Jew who rose to a responsible position in the government of King Artaxerxes of Persia. The Jews were captives in Persia but the period of seventy years prophesied by Daniel had been fulfilled. When Nehemiah heard that the walls and gates of Jerusalem were broken and destroyed he was distressed and prayed earnestly to God.

I grew up in the United States in an upper middle-class Jewish family.  Although we went to the synagogue on all the Jewish holidays, the real religion in our home was humanism.  Intellectual achievement and education seemed to be celebrated above all else.  I don’t think any of us, except maybe my mother, really believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  My father was an automotive engineer and my mother died of cancer many years ago.  One of my two brothers died of an overdose on drugs when he was nineteen years old.  My remaining brother is a jazz musician/psychiat

As Elijah was called by the God of Israel to “repair the altar of the Lord that was broken down” (1 Kings 18:30), so today the body of Messiah in Israel is being used to restore the true worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to call the people of the Land to turn from their idolatry.  The majority of Israelis today have rejected Orthodox Judaism, but are still longing for a genuine experience of God in their lives.  As a result, many have turned to various forms of occultic Judaism, new age practices, and even Satanism among the youth.  For most of them, their only concept of

Along with the steady growth in the size and maturity of the body of Messiah in Israel in the past decade, there has been a deepening appreciation of the vital role of worship in the advancing of His Kingdom in the face of great spiritual opposition. In these last days, as the battles intensify over the very survival and salvation of our nation of Israel , the Lord is calling His Messianic body in the Land to rise up and take our place as His warrior bride – warring in the spirit, while resting in our Bridegroom.