Wake Up, Church
Wake Up, Church
"Only those who saw these things with their own eyes will believe with what delight the Germans performed these operations; how glad they were when they succeeded in killing a child with only three or four blows; with what satisfaction they pushed the corpse into the mother's arms!"
So testified a Holocaust survivor at the Nuremberg war-crime trials. In his "magisterial and eloquent" tome, "A History of the Jews" (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1987), the English historian Paul Johnson, writes, "No Jew was too young to die.
"All women arriving at the death camps were shaved to the skin, the hair packed up and sent to Germany. If a breast-fed baby was a nuisance during the shaving, a guard simply smashed its head against the wall."
To recall such horrors ought realistically to be completely and utterly unbearable...even beyond us! But recall them and then stare unblinking and unflinching into the black abyss of Hitler's Germany we must, if the Church is to grasp the enormity of the task God sets before us in these Last Days!
The abominations of the Holocaust were perpetrated by Hitler and his Nazis, the German People, and the depraved disease of widespread European anti-Semitism! But none of these (although totally responsible) were the root cause or fountainhead of this awfulness. The source and crux was (and is) an ancient evil spirit called "antichrist". (1 Jo 2.18 & 22, 4.3; 2 Jo 7) This demon exists to try to replace God's Messiah Jesus, as Head of the Church, and to oppose Him becoming King over all of the nations.
It is "antichrist's" opposition to Jesus' return and enthronement on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which most concerns us in this essay. (Although we ought to also be profoundly exercised about this spirit's ongoing, stealthy subversion of Jesus' Lordship over His Church!)
Throughout the Old Testament, this demon constantly tried to take Israel out of existence (E.g. Haman the Agagite's planned massacre.), believing that if he could destroy Messiah's birth-family, he could prevent his nativity and His incarnation. Ever since the Lord Jesus' redeeming death on the Cross, physical resurrection from the grave, bodily ascension into Heaven, and His sending of the Holy Spirit to create the Church..."antichrist" has toiled relentlessly and unceasingly. To what end?
For the utter annihilation of God's People, Israel. Why? Because he has accurately identified the key which will unlock history; the catalytic event which will precipitate Heaven's release of Messiah to return to this earth and this world as its rightful Ruler...King of kings and Lord of lords.
"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. Behold, your house is being left to you desolate! For I say to you, from now on you shall not see Me until you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.' " (Mt 23.37-39)
At the heart and epicentre of the promised Last Days', global awakening of God's Jewish People to Jesus as Israel's Messiah, and the world's Redeemer and Saviour, there will be a unique and vital presence in the Old City of Jerusalem. This Fellowship of Jewish Saints will not only miraculously survive the horrors of the prophet Zechariah's predicted siege (12.2-3, 14.2), but their Holy Spirit-ignited and fuelled intercession will in fact be that prayer which "releases" the King to come back.
"And that He may send to you the Christ, the Messiah, who was designated and appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive and retain until the time for the complete restoration of all that God spoke by the mouth of all His holy prophets from ages past - from the most ancient time in the memory of man." (Acts 3.20-21 Amplified Bible)
We must understand this! The object of every persecution and pogrom over the past 2000 years, up to and including the Nazi' Holocaust, has ever been the complete destruction of the Jewish Race, including Jerusalem's Jewish Saints and intercessors, and thus their ultimate Messiah-calling and Millennium-inaugurating prayer. As the peerless, erudite Jewish prophet Art Katz (1929-2007), has already so penetratingly spelt out,
"Their (Israel's) salvation is the issue of the Kingdom. Their redemption is the issue of the release of the King to come and to inhabit their city (Jerusalem) and to rule from the throne of David and bring the law of God out to the nations through the redeemed People."
The seed for this ultimate prayer of which I speak, is already planted in the ground in the Land of Israel. It exists in the form of the Messianic Movement, which now desperately needs and deserves support (along with all of God's beloved Jewish People throughout the world); most especially to be hedged about, interceded for, and blest by unrelenting and unyielding prayer.
By whom? Well, so far as I am able to see, there is really only one People capable of such intercession...and that's us, the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ. Tragically, in general terms I would have to say that the Body of Christ at present is not only ill-prepared for this holy task, but also appears indifferent to the responsibility's seriousness...in some instances, even blinded to its existence.
At best, there are here and there pockets of sincere and Godly concern which is expressed in prayer for the continued military and political and economic success and expansion of the State of Israel. There is no prominent recognition of the bone-chilling reality presently stalking the stage of history, and the corridors of power. Make no mistake, "antichrist' is going to "go down"...but you can be sure, it will be with "all guns blazing"! Long after Germany clearly understood it had completely lost WW2, the SS continued to murder Jewish People...utter and complete demonic insanity and lunacy.
And that's exactly what Israel (State and People) will continue to battle against right up until The Day when all of earth's inhabitants witness the arrival of "a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True", and who is followed by "the armies of heaven...riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean." (Rev 19.11-16)
If not the Church, then who is going to consistently and persistently pray open Zechariah's "fountain" for "the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity"? (13.1) Who will plead the precious Blood of the Lamb of God, which alone can atone for, and cover, and cleanse, and sanctify beloved Israel? Who will sing for the Patriarchs' Children?
"There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel's veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains."
(Hymn 692 PCNZ)
Who is going to beat on Heaven's doors and windows, beseeching our Lord Jesus Christ to "pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced...and mourn for him, as one mourns for an only son."? (12.10) Who will keep on interceding in deepening, End Time darkness,
"O come, O come Immanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! rejoice! Immanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel."
(John Mason Neale, 1851)
For if we will not and do not pray and cry out and sing for Israel, then there will descend over us all again the same appalling and deathly silence which haunts Europe even up until today. A stunning and stunned silence, to be filled again (as it was during the Holocaust) with the pathetic, infant-cries of Rachel's babies, dying utterly needlessly...yet again!
After WW2, the great shout of resistance went up, "Never again! Never again!" But this battle is far from over, and "antichrist" will not give up his hellish vision and endeavour until our true King returns to gather all Israel together, "as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings". (Mt 23.37) Then finally this ancient and vile devil, and all of his human dupes and stooges, will be overthrown and destroyed by Jesus "with the breath of his mouth and...by the splendour of his coming". (2 Th 2.8)
And so, in the meantime (this in-between time), how will we elect to occupy ourselves? By building your own kingdom here on earth...rather than the true, which must be brought down from Heaven? By building a reputation for yourself here...or up there? By seeking your reward now...or later?
"The evil spirit answered them, 'Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you?' " (Ac 19.15)
"And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" (Lk 18.7-8)
