Israel and Water Baptism — Art Katz

The Mystery of Israel and the Church

One that Paul speaks about in Romans, in which he said, I would not have you to be ignorant of this mystery, lest you become wise in your own conceit. There's something about the mystery of Israel that opens up whole dimensions of things that would not otherwise have been seen, otherwise have been required.

And in the absence of that, we flaps into a kind of defunct Christianity, hardly sufficient for our own need, let alone have any capability of touching the world or being to the Jews in the last days what we ought.

Please don't stroke her here while I'm speaking. Could you? Yeah, thank you. We're going to see a great crisis break forth over all the earth with Jews in the last days. You can speak of it as a chastisement, which it is.

It will also be a penalty for sin and a judgment, which is right. It will not be some arbitrary act of God just performing something because he's malicious. It will be a God who is just and righteous and actually displaying his righteousness in the way that he will call his people to task and bring upon them the full penalty of their own rejection of him.

Because every calamity that has come to Jews in their history has been some attempt by God through the suffering experienced in calamity that it might be recognized as judgment so that the people might consider and break and turn repentantly to the God who has inflicted it.

So far, basically, it has not worked. And we Jews have a wonderful way to ascribe to men what comes to us from God. But in the last days, we're going to see in this final chastisement a dawning consciousness that the magnitude of the suffering that will come upon world Jewry, the uprooting from all nations, the devastation that will come to the nation Israel itself, maybe even the demise.

Do you know this word? The end, the death of the political state will have such a severity that Jews will be prompted as never before to perhaps consider that in the magnitude of what they're experiencing is a revelation of the magnitude of their sin.

And they'll be helped in this by your explanation that they're going to be moving through us in a condition of distress. And unless there's some mercy extended by the church in the earth at that time, not only of a physical kind, but of a spiritual kind, they will perish.

And their salvation is so critical for the coming of the Lord and the establishing of his kingdom. You know that the air goes out of me as I say things like that. I just feel depleted like I've lost virtue because the concepts are so awesome.

What? That that last thing has got to do with the coming of the Lord and the coming of his kingdom? Exactly. So it's more than just the rescue of a people in a final distress, but that a return of a remnant of those who survive through the mercy of the church brings the Lord out of a long confinement because it says in Acts 321, he's confined in the heavens waiting for the restoration of all things spoken by the prophets since the world began.

Jacob's Trouble and the Coming Crisis

And that thing that he's waiting for and that the prophets have spoken of is the scenario that I'm describing to you. A last days time of global suffering for the people Israel called the time of Jacob's trouble.

And Jacob is the condition of this people, not only in Israel, but all over the world and including in South Africa. So none will be omitted. None will be absolved. None will escape the severity of this final dealing is very close.

It could happen in a moment. The stage is set. It begins in Israel through circumstances that are already working and have been working since the advent of that state. And when the violence breaks out, it will not be confined to Israel, but will pursue Jews worldwide.

It will trigger and set forth a time of Jacob's trouble. You have to look this up for yourself. There's no way that I could review all this in any kind of detail. So if you have a pencil, a pen, a piece of paper, a Bible, you came to be entertained.

The classic chapters on the description of the time of Jacob's trouble. Jeremiah chapter 30 and 31. Daniel from chapter 7 through 12, particularly the end of the book of Daniel. And the power of the people is broken.

So you'll see that we're moving toward a climax that has its inception in Israel. When something is triggered by the very factors that have been working since the advent of the state of Israel. The irritation and the resentment of the neighbors, the Palestinians, the Arabs.

By the rude appropriation, if I can put it that way, of the land of Israel under the thought that it is our land. Yes, it is, but not at our taking. It's ours when it is given. It's ours when we can fulfill the conditions for remaining and abiding on the land, namely a covenant faithfulness to God.

The land is not ours to grab at any occasion. And so we're going to suffer for some of the things that have been set in motion by our own human attempt to fulfill. What I believe only God can perform and will perform at the very end of this.

So that unbelieving Jews are going to see God unveiled in a dimension that will beggar their minds presently. And not only Jews, but the church itself will be stunned that God is going to display himself in judgment in so vivid a fashion that we will know that we will know.

This is not some accident, some arbitrary thing. This is evidently a design of God. And then there are scriptures that talk of it. And as you get into the prophets, you'll see the references to ruined cities.

Ezekiel chapter 36, Ezekiel chapter 20, Amos chapter 9. Once you start getting into this prophetic overview, certain words will come up with a remarkable frequency. Scattered, expelled, cast out, terror, fear.

So that the Lord says at the end of this, you will no longer again know terror or fear. Indicating that the last experience of Jews in the world is terror and fear. Where you'll no longer be uprooted out or you'll no longer suffer famine.

And that blessing will come. You no longer plant vineyards and others will drink it. What does that imply? That others have appropriated what Jews have established. They have not had the opportunity to enjoy the fruit of their own labor.

So sudden will the upheaval be and the being cast out again into the nations. The dispersed of Judah and the cast, how to say the, not the cast away, somebody help me, of Israel. We're going to see that and it's going to be a shock for many Christians who have hoped for a happier scenario.

Who are aware that the state of Israel is presently in trouble and in conflict. But somehow it will be resolved and a peace will be established. And Israel will grow into the kind of nation that will fulfill God's hope for it and promise as the blessing to all nations.

National Devastation, Resurrection, and the Church's Calling

That's not the way that I believe the scriptures read. But the requirement of God is so great that you cannot grow into it. You cannot improve into it. It's going to require a devastation unto death and a resurrection.

So that we're going to see at the end of this the first national resurrection. We've seen individual resurrections. We know that Jesus was raised from the dead. The apostle Paul was eminently the man of the resurrection.

The early church was a resurrection phenomenon. Unfortunately, the present church is not. The present church only affirms the correctness of the doctrine of resurrection. But it lives far short of the reality.

And how can you blame it? Because what is there about our present Christianity that requires the life of God and the supernatural power of God and the resurrection reality? Our present Christianity is so timid, so predictable, so prescribed.

We can perform it out of our own intelligence and well-meaning intention. That will end in the design of God when the catastrophe of world Jewry takes place. And we will be called to a line of conduct and response beyond any ability in ourselves to perform.

And we will bless God in that day that in his great mercy he has presented us with a crisis of need that compels us to move from being merely evangelical or charismatic into the deepest appropriation of his life, his mercy, his love, his power, his authority.

Lest our own life end in some lesser place and we fix our eternal life on that basis. So let me run that by again. You know why I'm gasping for air? Because you're young. And I might just as well have come from Mars or another planet to bring views that are so unamendable to your present understanding.

Because I know that I know you have no concept of eternity at all. I know that you're fixed in your present mindset in this present life. The only thing is that you don't know it. And that the phrase this present life is an apostolic phrase coined and employed by both Paul and Peter.

And why do they say this present? Because they know that this is temporal, passing, and if you'll excuse my language, ephemeral. It means transient. It's going to fade. You don't know that. Being young and being the product of this age and this civilization, you think that now is the premium or what will soon be when you graduate school or when you get married or when you have your career.

God in his mercy wants to save us from an eternal embarrassment. When he speaks of a wailing and gnashing of teeth, I don't think that he's describing the reaction of the unsaved who are being cast into the fire of hell.

I think he's describing believers who have fallen short of the glory of God. And that he says out of darkness, it's not fire, but a distance from the brightness of his glory because most of us will not have lived in the light as he is in the light.

And when the day of eternity comes, it can come tomorrow, we will not be fitted to that proximity. Every one of us will have an eternity fixed in terms of what was the actuality and the truth of our walk with God in this present life.

And right now, just as a man 36 years old in the faith, wildly traveling in the world, I feel a deep sense of chagrin and almost pain for the condition of the church. For if the day of eternity would have come now, there would be a bellowing of wailings and gnashings of teeth for people who will find out too late they have lived beneath the glory of God and fixed themselves eternally in a place that cannot be remedied nor altered.

There's a finality about the day of eternity. There's a finality about the day of the Lord. And the early church, very much different than ourselves, lived in anticipation of that day. And when I say lived, I mean really lived.

Because what I'm saying is that if this has not come into our consciousness, we are not really living. We have biological life. We have a semblance of a Christian life. But it's not a life that eventuates in joy.

It's not a life that has a clear significance. It's not a life that anticipates a reward for the works performed. Because when Jesus comes, it says he brings his rewards with him, giving to every man according to his labor.

I'm sure that that phrase is as novel to you as other things that I'm speaking. I'm saying all that to say this. In the wisdom of God and the mercy of God, God has put us, the church, in a relationship with Israel and the Jew that serves purposes for us that would not otherwise have been recognized nor obtained.

Israel's Tribulation and the German Church's Warning

Israel is going to be brought into a catastrophic condition, an uprooting from their present places of security and efforts worldwide. Jesus says if that time were not cut short, no flesh would survive.

But because it will be cut short, for the elect's sake, there will be some survival. We cannot visualize it. You know, I'm something like a man coming to Germany, say, in 1929, 1930, before the advent of Hitler, who already has a prophetic anticipation of an enormous program of annihilation that will issue up out of Germany for the Jewish people in Europe, and trying to persuade the German church to be alerted for this catastrophe.

And I'm sure the man would have been looked upon as a madman, ranting and saying things that were unthinkable by people presently in a state of conflict in the best of all worlds in hope for a future in political and social changes because of the richness of German civilization.

They could not imagine a view of a kind that would speak about a Nazi takeover, that the gutter elements of the most despicable, loathed, debased, occultic, homosexual scum would actually rise up out of their cellar, beer hall meetings, and take over the whole apparatus of German civilization and set in motion a world war that will almost destroy Western civilization, bring down its own cities, and systematically annihilate European Jewry.

Somebody speaking like that in 1929, 1930, would have been dismissed as mad because the German church would have thought that unthinkable. They are our textbook because I'm saying that we're going to face a scenario much like that but worse, and it will not be confined to Germany or Europe.

And unless we anticipate it and take it into our present consideration, we will collapse as pathetically as the German church did. It went down like a deck of cards. Not only the church, but the courts, education, the universities, all of the apparatus of civilization that you would have thought had a long history and would have resisted evil, collapsed in fear for its own security and for the preservation of its own life.

There was nothing to resist the horrendous evil that came with Nazism in any institution of German society, including the church. The church collapsed because it was only an institution. Had it been an apostolic reality and a people in the spirit who could have discerned and resisted and contended against the powers that were prepared to take over their own nation, we might have seen a different history.

So I'm asking your sympathy for the strange burden I'm required to bear and to communicate before the time. Tonight on the radio program and in the interview, the question came up more than once on what is prophetic.

And one of the aspects of what prophetic is that is such an anguish for the man called to it is that he's required to speak something in advance of that time so as to make vivid and real that which is not yet, to set in motion by that speaking things that will be prepared for that eventuality.

Are you following me? What I'm learning to my astonishment as I'm traveling around South Africa and now more recently Zimbabwe and Zambia, how few Christians have ever even read Romans 9 through 11, that when I begin to speak on that subject, they blink like they're hearing it for the first time.

I've heard from pastors that they have admitted to me on this trip, they have actually passed it over, because it just is a muddle of things that they can't even fathom. I've had one of the most significant men of our generation, Ern Baxter, if anybody has ever heard that name, he's now passed on, tell me that Romans 11 has been a mystery that he has just never understood and has passed over.

And yet it's the mystery that Paul tells us that if we are ignorant of it, we will suffer a certain consequence. So I just want to commend these three chapters to get you into this mystery. You'll need to pray, because mere reading will not open it.

It's a mystery that requires a revelation by the Spirit. And if we are not disposed for that revelation or the implications of it, we will not receive it. If we want to continue in this present world and just be respectable Christians, who are Christians too, but also enjoying this present age and want to see it continue and do not desire an apocalyptic conclusion in judgment and in fire, you'll be as much at a loss as some of the ministers that I'm meeting.

Whether God Has Rejected Israel

You have to have an attitude of heart that when God sees, he opens and reveals. When you get into it, here's what you'll recognize, that Paul comes back again and again to the Church. He's answering a question from the Roman Church.

Is God finished with the Jews? They had every reason to believe that, because the Jews had slain the prophets that were sent unto them. They slew their own Messiah. They were about to see the destruction of Jerusalem and being cast out into the nations.

They had every reasonable right to think that Israel has had its chance, has blown it, and now the Church has become the Israel of God and would receive the promises of God and that this people would be eternally cast away.

So Paul is presented with an enormously significant question. And his answer is not only for the Church at Rome, but for the Church of every generation and especially our own. And he says, God forbid that you should think that.

He speaks of their fall as being temporary, a momentary thing historically. And why did God allow it? Not only because it's the consequence of Israel's apostasy and sin, but because through their fall, salvation has come to the Gentiles.

But take a look at that. Turn to Romans 11. From the very first verse, I say then, God has not rejected his people, has he? May it never be. I'm not conversant with Greek, but I'm told, and scholars make clear, that the language that Paul uses could not be stronger.

It's not just a thought in passing. God forbid you should think that or ever entertain the notion that God is finished with Israel. God cannot be finished with Israel because he has made promises to the patriarchs, because he has given them a call and a gifting that his own reputation, name, and honor are at stake.

He cannot be finished. Even their unbelief, even their rejection of their Messiah and the prophets that have preceded him will not be grounds for his rejection. So, God forbid that you should think that.

And then in verse 11, he takes it up again. Have they stumbled that they should fall? May it never be. But by their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to move them to jealousy. I don't know how you have that in your version, but it's clear.

That something that has happened to Israel that affects Gentiles, that salvation would come because of their fall, but not something for you to enjoy for yourself, as if the sum all and the be all is the salvation you have obtained because of their fall.

But through their fall, salvation has come to the Gentiles so as to move them to jealousy. This is one of the most profound insights of the mystery of the relationship between the Gentile church and the Jewish nation, that we are locked into something together, that neither they nor we can come to the fullness of God's intention unless we see the design and the mystery that God has allowed a Gentile church to be birthed out of Israel's transgression, but to be an instrument to restore Israel to the salvation that they have lost by moving them to jealousy.

I always say, would to God do a footnote at the bottom of the page to tell us how, but Paul does not give us an inkling of how it's to be done. You think about it. Think of your own present fellowship, the best of them.

Can you consider that if a Jew walked in or knew of it, that that would move him to jealousy? Is there anything going on presently in the church in its best form that would move present Jews to a jealousy?

What is he talking about? Not just an emotion of jealousy, but an envy and a desire to have what they see demonstrated by you. That has got to be something more than good meetings, good services, good worship.

There's some demonstration that God is waiting for that has to come from a Gentile church, and that's what's astounding, because Jews have no expectation that you can perform anything that will move them to jealousy.

They already have it all together. They are already impressive, and even without the aid of the Holy Spirit, their services can easily match or exceed ours. Their rabbis are intellectual, eloquent. They have the advantage of Hebrew and ancient liturgy and melody, and all the kinds of things in terms of services.

They're not going to be jealous. What then will do it? Something that they could never expect would ever have issued from Gentiles. Some demonstration of the reality of God that is so unequivocal, so demonstrable, that they will recognize in a flash that what we're seeing through you is what would otherwise have been our reality if we had not forsaken God and rejected the Messiah, because what issues from you is so unmistakably the reality of the God of Israel and the God of Jacob.

Am I describing the present condition of the church? Not at all. That's why elsewhere in this chapter Paul says, When the fullness of the Gentiles be come in, so all Israel shall be saved. As it is written, the deliverer shall come out of Zion and take transgression from Jacob.

Israel is going to be acted upon. It is going to be delivered by the Lord himself. The deliverer will come out of Zion. And I don't think it means a physical, geographical place so much as out of what the word Zion symbolically represents, out of a reality obtained by a church.

That when it comes of age, when the fullness of the Gentiles be come in, when his purpose has been obtained for the Gentile church in the character by which he would have it to enter eternity, he then turns to the Jewish people and delivers them.

So I'm saying all that to say this. The issue of Israel's salvation as a nation, all Israel shall be saved as it is written, is the issue of a church coming of age. When the fullness of the Gentiles be come in, when the number from all nations, from the mission activity of the church and its evangelistic activity has been obtained, a people for his name from among all nations, but more than that, when a character of a certain kind has been obtained, God then moves toward this people and becomes the deliverer.

And so you say, big deal. So what? Because you are presently indifferent about the fate of this people and don't realize that their deliverance is not just their salvation, but the coming of the king and his kingdom and his glory forever.

When you read 9 -11, the last statement that Paul makes is, Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, who has been his counselor, for of him and through him and to him are all things, to whom be glory forever.

So you dear saints, unless there's a jealousy for the glory of God, unless there's an understanding that something takes place at the conclusion of history that obtains that glory and it is of such a kind that it is forever, we cannot be what we need to be to release the deliverer to come out of Zion.

In a word, the whole conclusion of the faith rests on the church of the last days that I'm looking at now. If you're representative of this church of the last days, that is the issue of God's conclusion in history.

Can you follow that? Let me try it from the beginning of Romans 9 -11. Here's where Paul begins his great statement. I'm telling the truth in Christ. I'm not lying. My conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart for I could wish that I myself were a curse separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh who are Israelites to whom belongs the adoption as sons, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, temple service, the promises whose are the fathers and from whom is Christ according to the flesh who is overall God blessed forever.

What a remarkable introduction to three chapters that's at the heart of the whole book of Romans. And the book of Romans itself is Paul's finest, classic, most systematic statement of his whole apostolic view of the reality of the faith.

And the heart of it is this mystery that begins with this statement of his own heart attitude toward his kinsmen that he has a deep and continuous grief for their having fallen away and he so desires their salvation he would wish himself a curse for his brethren's sake.

He's willing to exchange his exalted relationship with God forfeit that and even his salvation if only they could obtain it. You see how the urgency in his apostolic heart? We can read that like well that's okay for Paul and that's because he's Jewish.

But what if this statement is not because he's Jewish but because he's apostolic. What if the grief that he experiences is not because these are his kinsmen in the flesh and he has a natural sympathy but because he's an apostle that has the heart of God and the mind of God and the desire of God.

What's the difference for us? This. If it's the issue of being a Jew identifying with a Jew that's just a curiosity we can go on. But if it's an apostle experiencing a depth of God's heart for a people that need urgently to be saved and have had a tragic history and a glorious conclusion and he's feeling that not because he's naturally a Jew but because he's an apostle in proximity with God's own heart then we also can stand in a potential of having a heart like that also.

And we will have it to the degree that we resemble Paul in our own apostolic character and make up as the church. Can you see that? Why does these three chapters begin with Paul's anguish? Because he's not flaunting the fact that he's Jewish.

His heart cry comes out of the reality of what he is in God as an apostle. And therefore there's a challenge and an implication for the church to come to a like place of relationship with Jews to the degree that it also is apostolic.

But it'll not happen if we have no such intention or desire or if we're content with things as they presently are or the world is too much with us and we just want a Christianity that serves our purposes and provides a program or the kinds of things that add some dimension to our life.

We have got somehow to come into the understanding that we're moving toward a conclusion of an age. That there's a whole salvation history that goes all the way back to the beginning that has to do with the election of God of a nation that has historically failed him and who have profaned his name in all nations to which they've been scattered.

And that at the end of the age God rescues that people or a remnant of them out of their own belief and their own activity against God because Paul says they are the enemies of the gospel for your sake.

For God to do that at the end of the age and to extend mercy to this people who do not deserve it is the most profound revelation of God that will have come in the history of creation. It is God's final statement of who he is as God to a world who will observe this mercy because he will not perform this in the corner.

The whole world will see Jews not deserving of God's consideration. Jews suffering a chastisement and a penalty for their sins that are clear and being expelled again into the most remote places so that when I've been in Egypt and other places in the world and night onto Ethiopia I can already say to the simple believers there are you willing to take in Jews who will be expelled into your locality?

They're astonished that when I'm in Cairo pleading with the cream of Christian society in a series of meetings like this that ran for 3, 4 or 5 nights and are sensing their resistance because they're not too happy for Jews.

They've suffered in wars with Israel and they don't want to hear that they have a future relationship with Israel and the Jew because they are the church and that the church in every nation has this call.

They want somehow to shuck it off and so I poured out my soul the way I'm trying to do tonight the same sense of futility and it was not received. And they went about their tea and their business and in that moment very uncommon for me I had a vision and I saw in the by the eye of the spirit men bareheaded marching, forced marched through the boulevards of Cairo if you've ever been to Egypt they go back to the European possession of that part of the world broad boulevards and certain people being forced marched and police lining the sidewalks and holding back the crowds that are wanting to break through the police barriers to kick and spit at these defenseless people all of whom are bareheaded and then I realized I'm looking at a defeated Israeli army being triumphantly exhibited by their they are the captors the vanquished, the defeated by their superiors in shame and humiliation through the streets and the police can hardly hold back the outraged mobs that want to kick and spit and I said, hey, before you end and leave here and finish your tea I've just seen something and I believe that what I've seen by the spirit you're going to realize it will happen.

Israel is going to be defeated its armies are going to be vanquished its people are going to be dispelled and you're going to see defeated Israelis forced marched through your streets. Will you come through to spit and kick or will you come through to save and take in and provide a refuge for some to whom you will be directed that there can be a final fulfillment that I've called my son out of Egypt.

That's how graphic and real it's going to be in many places that are hostile to Jews. So the issue for the church in Egypt is do we reflect the national mentality against Israel or are we in a place with God that we share his heart rather than the national consensus.

Can you understand what I'm saying. The church, God is looking for something from the church and praise God that he's looking for it and will take every grace to obtain it lest having failed in that we will find ourselves eternally embarrassed for having lived a Christian life beneath the glory of God's standard and call the issue of Israel will compel the church of all nations to come to a place of faith a place of reality in the purposes of God that otherwise would have been not left to us.

It compels us at last to become the church. And when I say church I'm not talking about congregations of isolated individualities who attend services but church as it was known at the first apostolically as a congregation of people who were corporate, integral and joined because the demand that Israel will make cannot be borne by individual believers however superior they are in their spirituality.

It's going to take a whole church. It's going to take the church becoming the church tonight on this little radio interview that we had and elsewhere in these days I quoted from Psalm 102 and I'll try and end with that because this is where I believe Paul gained his insight into the mystery.

The Psalms precede by centuries if not millennia. The apostolic church and Paul who was a student of the Psalms of the Hebrew Scriptures saw things written there and recorded there that were eschatological they had to do with last days things written by Psalmists expressed by the Spirit beyond anything they could have understood.

And Paul gained a key of insight that we need presently. Psalm 102 the beginning of that Psalm describes victims that look like they're in a concentration camp condition. In verse 2. Do not hide your face from me in the day of my distress.

It's the Psalmist crying out. Incline your ear to me. Answer me speedily in the day when I call for my days pass away like smoke and my bones burn like a furnace. You would think that this was written during the Nazi Holocaust but it's written for an event that was yet future but will greatly resemble it.

The only difference will be the magnitude of Jewish suffering will be greater than what took place in Europe and that this will be the cry of many whose days will pass away like smoke. My heart is stricken and withered like grass.

I'm too wasted to eat my bread because of my loud groaning. My bones cling to my skin. I'm like an owl of the wilderness like a little owl of the waste places. I'm like a lonely bird on a housetop all day long.

My enemies taunt me. These are enemies that not only are successful in bringing Jews to this condition but enjoying the dilemma and the condition that these Jews are in. There's a vengeance here. There's a hatred.

And when we see the present disposition of Islamic nations toward Israel it doesn't take much to see that the psalmist who could not have known these last days particulars describes what we are going to actually see take place in time all day long.

My enemies taunt me. Those who deride me use my name for a curse. I eat ashes like bread and mingle tears with my drink. But the remarkable thing is that there's a recognition by those who are suffering that that this is not an accident that it's not to be blamed on Hitler or whoever the figure will be at that time but that God himself is the author of that distress.

Because of your indignation the psalmist is speaking to God and anger. For you have lifted me up and thrown me aside. There's no complaint there's no implication that God is being unjust. It's a recognition that God is doing this and that it's in proportion to our sins that we're suffering it.

My days are like an evening shadow. I wither away like grass. But you oh Lord are enthroned forever. Your name endures to all generations. Your God always your sovereign always. So even in our suffering we know that you're responsible and that it's deserved.

But you will rise up and have compassion on Zion. Zion again is that beautiful symbolic word of the people of God that finally come in to the character of God. Rise up is a wonderfully a word suggestive of resurrection.

You will rise up and have compassion on Zion. For it is time to favor it. For the appointed time or the set time has come. How does the psalmist know that? That there's a moment in history when Israel is reduced to the condition that we've just read but that it will be changed when a moment comes for which God waits to deliver them.

And that's the point now that I want to stress the appointed time has come. How does the psalmist know? For your servants hold its stones dear and have pity on its dust. Whoever the servants are they are not Israel itself.