I Have a Dream - Unfolding - Stand Goodenough - http://jerusalemwatchman.org/2014/10/i-have-a-dream-unfolding/
"Thus says the Lord of hosts: 'In those days ten men from every language of the nations shall grasp the sleeve of a Jewish man, saying, "Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you."'" (Zechariah 8:23)
I have a dream.
It is a dream about a nation.
It is about a people gathered back to their own land from the slave galleys and circuses of Rome, from under the swords of Crusaders, from the burning stakes and forced baptisms of the Vatican's Inquisition, from the decrees of banishment from country after country after country, from the charges of the Cossacks, from their forced exile beyond the Pale, from the pogroms of Russia and Eastern Europe, from the sealed doors of the Nazi gas chambers and the iron doors of the crematoria...
I see the remnant of the Jewish people gathered together in the land from which their forefathers were dragged in chains 2000 years ago - a land abused and neglected and left to rot by others who controlled it. I see the land coming to life as they drain and plant and build and grow and establish and conquer and overcome - resurrecting their land and recreating it as a viable, beautiful, productive, world-impacting reality in the center of the earth.
Out of this land came the law and the prophets and the covenants, the moral foundations of Judeo-Christian nations; from this land and nation we received the Lord, His Apostles and martyrs. Like an unstoppable generator - the land poured out these blessings upon the nations. For 2000 years the Christian world has carried the legacy bequeathed us by the people of this land - all wrapped up in the words and pages of the only truly holy book on earth - the Bible.
This incomparable nation with its glorious history is being restored to what it was once before.
I see darkness gathering around the dream.
I see the hostility to the ingathering of the Jewish people to their land - hostility from neighbors inside and around the land, and hostility from peoples and nations the Jews have left behind. While they lived among these nations this hostility touched them in prejudice and anti-Semitism and violence; now that they are moving away and being reconstituted as a nation in their own land, this racist bigotry threatens them as anti-Semitism in its new form - anti-Zionism and anti-Israelism.
I see the dream valiantly rising against the darkness.
I see the regathered Jewish people fighting to stand against those inside and around them who seek their destruction - those who want to drive them into the Mediterranean Sea. I see them fight and I see them win against tremendous odds, against overwhelming numbers that should have seen them obliterated and have in the past brought them to the very brink of destruction.
I see the regathered, thriving, increasingly prosperous nation in its land - contributing way beyond its numbers to the most important trends of development across the entire earth.
In antiquity, their contribution to the world that impacted untold millions in every nation was the Bible. Back in their land after almost two thousand years of roaming, their contributions to improving the lives of untold millions around the world is mind-boggling. In awesomely positive and beneficial ways the Jews are shaping the world that our children and our children's children will grow up in.
I see the dream faltering in the face of the forces against it.
I see the regathered, reconstituted Jewish people besieged by diplomatic pressure from every side, resisting, even as they continue to build on the ground, resisting, even as they make concessions to show their good will and desire for peace. Resisting against the solid wall of international opinion and pressure that is pushing them to leave the land they have returned to, resisting, even while smiling and trying to keep the friendships of those who insist they are her allies. Resisting, but slipping slowly, meter by painful meter towards the edge. It will mean the loss of their most recently restored strategic high ground for the creation of another enemy state. It will mean the reversal of all they have achieved after their centuries of exile and persecution, and after decades of renewal and growth.
I see awakening from far away. I see help coming to the dream.
I see Christians caught up in their own thing.
I see - here and there - Christians looking up from their Christian issues and Christian selves, turning to look towards the center of the earth and slowly waking to the realization that the world is trying to stop what God is determined to do.
I see Christians slowly being roused to realize that their God is looking for those who will stand in the gap - who will do what we expect others to do, what we insist politicians do, and cry about bitterly when they don't do it.
I see Christians waking up, and standing up, gathering together and beginning to raise their voices, lifting their voices to send a message that grows in strength and volume and conviction to their presidents and prime ministers, their kings and their queens.
"The land belongs to the Jewish people. It was given to them by God, established under them by God, held in trust for them by God when they were not in it, restored to them by God, and destined by God to be their homeland forever.
"Your efforts as our governments and leaders to take their land from them and give it to another people is unjust and immoral, and flies in the face of the purposes of Almighty God. He is not blind or oblivious to what we are doing. For the sake of our nation, cease and desist from your efforts towards a two-state-solution, and enable and encourage the Jews to complete their return and apply Jewish sovereignty once again to all the land they have been returned to."
I see the dream underpinned, strengthened, given support and new life.
I see the embattled Jewish people - the ordinary people in the streets, the policy makers and the leaders of the government - lifting up their heads and pricking up their ears, turning to look with eyes wide with amazement and glistening with tears out to the north and the south and the east and the west, across the oceans to the gentile nations of the world, hearing with astonishment the voices of men like you and me urging and encouraging them to take that stand and to possess their land.
"Israel - stop! Stand on your land. Rise up. Go in and possess what is yours. For as it was the Lord who gave this land to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob, and established it under Joshua and the judges, the dynasty of David and the devout leadership if Nehemiah, so it is the Lord who has given it back to you."
I hear the voice grow louder and louder with encouragement : "Rise up and possess the land Israel. Do not be afraid. Rise up and possess the land, and see how the Lord your God will fight for you."
I see the Jewish people back in their land - many without faith in God, many without a personal relationship to their God - embattled by everyone in the world, unable to do what they have to do because of the opposition of the world, because they believed they were alone. I see them astonished and amazed at the international Christian cry exhorting them to possess their land. I see them turn to their leaders and say, "It's okay, we can go ahead, we can do this. Look at the millions of Christians who will support us in their nations. They are standing with us. They are strengthening us. Let's do what we have been enabled to do. Come, let us go in and possess the land."
I see the dream - except that it is not a dream. It is not a hope or a whim or a wish. It is not even a prayer - although I will pray this dream into everlasting reality.
It is God's purpose. It is the foreknown and foretold plan of God for His people Israel and the body of believing Gentiles who will cleave themselves unto her as Ruth did to Naomi.
And unless we Christians open our eyes, shake off the complacent cobwebs, stop pursuing personal prosperity and refrain from attending in droves the speculative and self-focusing 'end time' prophecy conferences; unless we take our eyes off ourselves and fix them on Israel - the apple of God's eye - imparting to them our faith in their God and exhorting them to claim their inheritance; unless we point to all the miracles that have been done to preserve them and to return them and to restore them in their land, and say to the people of Judah, "Behold your God!" - we will sleep through it all, and we will miss the most momentous thing that is happening in our day.
In a play on Theodore Herzl's famous words as he peered into the future towards his envisaged Jewish state, "If we believe it - and act - it is no dream."
"Thus says the Lord of hosts: 'In those days ten men from every language of the nations shall grasp the sleeve of a Jewish man, saying, "Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you."'" (Zechariah 8:23)
I have a dream.
It is a dream about a nation.
It is about a people gathered back to their own land from the slave galleys and circuses of Rome, from under the swords of Crusaders, from the burning stakes and forced baptisms of the Vatican's Inquisition, from the decrees of banishment from country after country after country, from the charges of the Cossacks, from their forced exile beyond the Pale, from the pogroms of Russia and Eastern Europe, from the sealed doors of the Nazi gas chambers and the iron doors of the crematoria...
I see the remnant of the Jewish people gathered together in the land from which their forefathers were dragged in chains 2000 years ago - a land abused and neglected and left to rot by others who controlled it. I see the land coming to life as they drain and plant and build and grow and establish and conquer and overcome - resurrecting their land and recreating it as a viable, beautiful, productive, world-impacting reality in the center of the earth.
Out of this land came the law and the prophets and the covenants, the moral foundations of Judeo-Christian nations; from this land and nation we received the Lord, His Apostles and martyrs. Like an unstoppable generator - the land poured out these blessings upon the nations. For 2000 years the Christian world has carried the legacy bequeathed us by the people of this land - all wrapped up in the words and pages of the only truly holy book on earth - the Bible.
This incomparable nation with its glorious history is being restored to what it was once before.
I see darkness gathering around the dream.
I see the hostility to the ingathering of the Jewish people to their land - hostility from neighbors inside and around the land, and hostility from peoples and nations the Jews have left behind. While they lived among these nations this hostility touched them in prejudice and anti-Semitism and violence; now that they are moving away and being reconstituted as a nation in their own land, this racist bigotry threatens them as anti-Semitism in its new form - anti-Zionism and anti-Israelism.
I see the dream valiantly rising against the darkness.
I see the regathered Jewish people fighting to stand against those inside and around them who seek their destruction - those who want to drive them into the Mediterranean Sea. I see them fight and I see them win against tremendous odds, against overwhelming numbers that should have seen them obliterated and have in the past brought them to the very brink of destruction.
I see the regathered, thriving, increasingly prosperous nation in its land - contributing way beyond its numbers to the most important trends of development across the entire earth.
In antiquity, their contribution to the world that impacted untold millions in every nation was the Bible. Back in their land after almost two thousand years of roaming, their contributions to improving the lives of untold millions around the world is mind-boggling. In awesomely positive and beneficial ways the Jews are shaping the world that our children and our children's children will grow up in.
I see the dream faltering in the face of the forces against it.
I see the regathered, reconstituted Jewish people besieged by diplomatic pressure from every side, resisting, even as they continue to build on the ground, resisting, even as they make concessions to show their good will and desire for peace. Resisting against the solid wall of international opinion and pressure that is pushing them to leave the land they have returned to, resisting, even while smiling and trying to keep the friendships of those who insist they are her allies. Resisting, but slipping slowly, meter by painful meter towards the edge. It will mean the loss of their most recently restored strategic high ground for the creation of another enemy state. It will mean the reversal of all they have achieved after their centuries of exile and persecution, and after decades of renewal and growth.
I see awakening from far away. I see help coming to the dream.
I see Christians caught up in their own thing.
I see - here and there - Christians looking up from their Christian issues and Christian selves, turning to look towards the center of the earth and slowly waking to the realization that the world is trying to stop what God is determined to do.
I see Christians slowly being roused to realize that their God is looking for those who will stand in the gap - who will do what we expect others to do, what we insist politicians do, and cry about bitterly when they don't do it.
I see Christians waking up, and standing up, gathering together and beginning to raise their voices, lifting their voices to send a message that grows in strength and volume and conviction to their presidents and prime ministers, their kings and their queens.
"The land belongs to the Jewish people. It was given to them by God, established under them by God, held in trust for them by God when they were not in it, restored to them by God, and destined by God to be their homeland forever.
"Your efforts as our governments and leaders to take their land from them and give it to another people is unjust and immoral, and flies in the face of the purposes of Almighty God. He is not blind or oblivious to what we are doing. For the sake of our nation, cease and desist from your efforts towards a two-state-solution, and enable and encourage the Jews to complete their return and apply Jewish sovereignty once again to all the land they have been returned to."
I see the dream underpinned, strengthened, given support and new life.
I see the embattled Jewish people - the ordinary people in the streets, the policy makers and the leaders of the government - lifting up their heads and pricking up their ears, turning to look with eyes wide with amazement and glistening with tears out to the north and the south and the east and the west, across the oceans to the gentile nations of the world, hearing with astonishment the voices of men like you and me urging and encouraging them to take that stand and to possess their land.
"Israel - stop! Stand on your land. Rise up. Go in and possess what is yours. For as it was the Lord who gave this land to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob, and established it under Joshua and the judges, the dynasty of David and the devout leadership if Nehemiah, so it is the Lord who has given it back to you."
I hear the voice grow louder and louder with encouragement : "Rise up and possess the land Israel. Do not be afraid. Rise up and possess the land, and see how the Lord your God will fight for you."
I see the Jewish people back in their land - many without faith in God, many without a personal relationship to their God - embattled by everyone in the world, unable to do what they have to do because of the opposition of the world, because they believed they were alone. I see them astonished and amazed at the international Christian cry exhorting them to possess their land. I see them turn to their leaders and say, "It's okay, we can go ahead, we can do this. Look at the millions of Christians who will support us in their nations. They are standing with us. They are strengthening us. Let's do what we have been enabled to do. Come, let us go in and possess the land."
I see the dream - except that it is not a dream. It is not a hope or a whim or a wish. It is not even a prayer - although I will pray this dream into everlasting reality.
It is God's purpose. It is the foreknown and foretold plan of God for His people Israel and the body of believing Gentiles who will cleave themselves unto her as Ruth did to Naomi.
And unless we Christians open our eyes, shake off the complacent cobwebs, stop pursuing personal prosperity and refrain from attending in droves the speculative and self-focusing 'end time' prophecy conferences; unless we take our eyes off ourselves and fix them on Israel - the apple of God's eye - imparting to them our faith in their God and exhorting them to claim their inheritance; unless we point to all the miracles that have been done to preserve them and to return them and to restore them in their land, and say to the people of Judah, "Behold your God!" - we will sleep through it all, and we will miss the most momentous thing that is happening in our day.
In a play on Theodore Herzl's famous words as he peered into the future towards his envisaged Jewish state, "If we believe it - and act - it is no dream."
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