Rejoice with Israel, Be Glad for Her!

Tzippe Barrow
09-08-2014

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JERUSALEM, Israel -- As Israelis prepare to celebrate the nation’s 66th Independence Day, Yom Ha’atzmaut, it’s a timely reminder that God really is watching over His Word to perform it. ( )

News headlines can get even the most stouthearted down, including those with a deep and abiding faith in the Almighty.

The truth is the Bible is an infinitely more uplifting and reliable source for understanding today’s headlines.

The more we see what’s going on in the world from God’s perspective, the more effectively we can pray into it.

The Old Testament is more than just the history of the Jewish people. Through Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah and other Old Testament prophets, we learn about a key outworking of that plan: the re-gathering of the Jews to Israel. It's been going on in earnest since the late 1800s.

Today’s worldwide upsurge of anti-Semitism has and will factor into the re-gathering, or aliyah -- immigration to Israel under the Law of Return. The fact is Israel wasn’t reborn because of the Holocaust but in spite of it. Still it seems we’ve entered the times of the hunters.

“Behold, I will send for many fishermen,” says the Lord, “and they shall fish them.; and afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill and out of the holes of the rocks.” ( )

The most recent example is Ukraine’s Jewish community, which has experienced increasing anti-Semitic incidents even before Russia’s invasion of eastern Ukraine. So far this year, almost twice as many Ukrainian Jews immigrated to Israel than in all of 2013, the Jewish Agency reported recently.

But why is God so intent on re-gathering the Jews to Israel?  What’s behind it? What’s the purpose? The purpose is salvation. Aliyah and salvation are inexorably linked. God’s covenant with the house of Jacob is eternal.

“David My servant shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd; they shall also walk in My judgments and observe My statutes and do them. Then they shall dwell in the land that I have given to Jacob My servant, where your fathers dwelt; and they shall dwell there, they, their children, and their children’s children, forever; and My servant David shall be their prince forever.” ( )

Our calling is to pray into the re-gathering of the Jews to Israel where God will fulfill what He’s spoken. 

“For I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them. Then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; you shall be My people, and I will be your God.” ( ).

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About The Author

Tzippe
Barrow

From her perch high atop the mountains surrounding Jerusalem, Tzippe Barrow tries to provide a bird's eye view of events unfolding in her country. Tzippe's parents were born to Russian Jewish immigrants, who fled the czar's pogroms to make a new life in America. As a teenager, Tzippe wanted to spend a summer in Israel, but her parents, sensing the very real possibility that she might want to live there, sent her and her sister to Switzerland instead. Twenty years later, the Lord opened the door to visit the ancient homeland of her people.
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