The Lord Is Coming With Fire — Bryan Anthony

Yeah, let's pray. Thank you, Lord. Great God in heaven. We bless you this evening. We turn to your throne. We turn to you. We ask Lord that as we open up the scriptures this evening and look at Israel that you would grant to us a spirit of grace and understanding Lord that you would speak something tonight that would be foundational that would be life-giving that would grant to us a greater revelation of your purpose and of your nature in Jesus name.

Amen. Well, I just felt stirred to take up this article that I wrote last year and read through some of it and just see where things go from there. You may have read it. I don't know if any I know Samuel has read it, but I'm not sure if anybody else has it's called what is it called?

Yahweh Comes With Fire in Isaiah 66

Yahweh is coming with fire a word on the knowledge of God Israel and the church's eschatological calling and the springboard passage that I wrote out of was Isaiah 66 verses 15 through 18. So I'm going to read the see the Lord is coming with fire and his chariots are like a whirlwind.

He will bring down his anger with Fury and his rebuke with flames of fire for with fire and with his sword the Lord will execute judgment upon all men and many will be those slain by the Lord those who consecrate and purify themselves to go into the gardens following the one in the midst of those who eat the flesh of pigs and rats and other abominable things they will meet their end together declares the Lord and I because of their actions and their imaginations I'm about to come and gather all nations and tongues and they will come and see my glory.

Theological Famine and the Loss of Discernment

We are suffering from a terrible theological famine these days. I refer not to the need for lofty religious speech and intellectual striving though I'm convinced that we modern believers are far too lazy a bunch when it comes to studying the scriptures.

I'm speaking instead of the fact that we are languishing in immaturity lovelessness and lawlessness being pulled and jerked by the powers of entertainment wealth and various forms of idolatry and we scarcely realize that a famine of hearing the word of the Lord is upon us.

We are inundated with words about the Lord but it is still rare for us to hear for us to hear a word of the Lord. One of the obvious rotten fruits of this condition is our conspicuous inability to discern the difference between the works of God and the works of the flesh.

And in this regard, we are nearly as guilty as the atheist next door. We have been unwilling to ask painful questions even if they are of the kind set forth in the scriptures and have thus robbed ourselves of the knowledge of God as he is.

Passages such as this from Isaiah 66 are mostly unfamiliar to we modern Westerners and they do not fit into our Walmart McDonald's HDTV culture. How can it be relevant if I don't understand it? And if it doesn't appeal to my immediate sensory needs if it doesn't make me immediately happy if it doesn't bring immediate resolution to my curiosity if it isn't presented in a manner that entertains and keeps my attention, what have I to do with it?

We've lost the ability to muse and contemplate and succumbing to what C .S. Lewis called a post-human state. We have sought to shirk the truth, especially when it is difficult to consider or receive.

Israel as Instruction for the Church

This article sprung out of a burden that came upon me about a year ago when I was just looking at the issue of Israel and reflecting on Paul's statement in 1st Corinthians 10 to where he instructed the church at Corinth to look at the nation Israel for these things have happened to them for our instruction upon whom the ends of the ages have come and I had just heard a report of a minister that had fallen at that time and was just asking the Lord.

What is it in the makeup of the church that is missing a certain character that seemed to mark the prophets of old and all of the men of the scriptures for that matter. It seems as if our knowledge of God is deficient and maybe in the most drastic way in the charismatic world that I'm a part of and so I was just being broken over this consideration and thinking about these things and this is the article that flowed out of that burden in prayer calling us back to consider God's dealings with Israel and the revelation of God that comes to us in a unique way through that people and that we can't get in a full orb sense unless we receive it as it's been given through that people.

So what am I what in the world am I talking about? Well, let's go on little do we know that nothing is more relevant to our lives upon the earth than the radically theological nature of passages such as this in Isaiah 66 and other like passages again when I say theological I do not mean that this is the stuff of advanced intellectuals.

What I mean is these portions of scripture are not meant only to fill up space in our Bibles or even to give us a grid on the end times but chiefly to reveal the nature and character of God himself in that sense.

They are intensely theological for theology is simply the study of God if we do not know the Lord as he has revealed himself and if we have failed to love him as he has revealed himself what will change our disposition toward him when darker days are upon us.

Do we really love the God of the scriptures or have we been guilty of making him after our own liking in Isaiah 66 the Lord reveals himself as fire and this is not merely a sentimental description of himself as passionate and fervent though no one is more passionate or fervent than the Lord he is here revealing himself as holy and as judge.

And if we have only loved him as Savior and have failed to love him as judge we have not yet loved him as he is. What do we know of the God who comes with fire. He was and is and is to come with fire and we need to prayerfully reflect on him in this way and to ask him for the necessary understanding of his nature in this context.

Well, I'm sure that some of you in this room have already spent years reflecting on the things that I'm speaking of and have prayed into them and have written on them but I think we need reminders. We need the perspective of the prophets brought back to the floor of our consideration because these are the foundational men who came into a excuse me who came into a revelation of God by revelation and not only by the formulation of a system of thought.

I'm convinced that in America even we've reduced the nature of God and the gospel to something that fits our culture and a convenient expression and experience of life that does not give the Lord the opportunity to break in and bring the demand of Lordship.

And so there's a necessary call and a need in our day for voices to be formed in the hidden place of prayer and in the scriptures and in the knit-and-grit reality of life who would actually be raised up in these days to set him forth again as he is.

I'm thinking even of Amos the prophet who was even unwilling to be called a prophet but would prefer to be called a farmer or someone who was putting his hand to practical things but who against his own initiation came into the calling of a prophetic and foundational reality out of the place of communion with the Lord not because he had sought it not because he had desired it not because he wanted some kind of an image to portray prophetically speaking or to function as one of the professional prophets in Jerusalem but because he was thrust into that calling on the basis of his union with the Lord and we're in need of men again in our day who come into that reality of a true knowledge of God and a true setting forth of God as he is and it applies in a very intense way.

Fire as the Holiness and Judgment of God

I think in our day with the way that we perceive Israel the issue of Israel and even the modern state of Israel. So let's let's read on and see what unfolds. I've got a little quotation from J. Alec Motyer from his commentary on Isaiah on this portion.

He says with fire or as fire has this has the same construction as Exodus 3 2 where fire is defined as a motif of the unapproachable deadly holiness of God. I want to read that again with fire or as fire in Isaiah 66 has the same construction in the original language as Exodus 3 2 where fire is defined as a motif of the unapproachable deadly holiness of God.

What's the motif? It's a it's a way of viewing. It's a it's a mode of communicating a certain aspect of something. So he's saying that the prophets usage of the word fire in alignment with Exodus 3 2 carries on that thread of the knowledge of God throughout the scriptures that our God is a consuming fire.

But the motif is that of an unapproachable and holy God and he coins the holiness of God in this way the deadly holiness of God. He goes on to say the whole of human history from the fall to the last day is bracketed about by the sword of holiness in Isaiah 59 17.

He says righteousness was the first garment the Lord put on in 61 10. It was among the garments passed on to the anointed one who returning from treading the winepress of wrath speaks in righteousness and 63 one.

So I go on to ask what do we know of the deadly holiness of God? Is this some heretical teaching some sadistic description given by an armchair theologian who has been locked in his study too long removed from the real world or have we been so devoid of the biblical view that we cannot recognize the God who will execute judgment upon all men and many will be those slain.

By the Lord. I recently heard a lecture by somewhat critical Old Testament theologian whose commentaries I've appreciated over the years in the middle of his lecture. He actually stated that he was embarrassed about the violence of Yahweh as it is set forth in the scriptures with all of his advanced training.

He could not reconcile the mercy of God with the God who will bring down his anger with fury and his rebuke with flames of fire. This same theologian whose commentaries I have so delighted in over the years not too long ago within the last year became a part of a campaign to support homosexual activity in the church.

I was I was baffled. I was flabbergasted. I couldn't believe it. His commentaries have been so rich on Jeremiah and other Old Testament commentaries and there I see him holding the banner of this new esteem for homosexuality within the church.

I just couldn't believe it. I wrote a Hebrew scholar friend of mine. I said, how does an Old Testament scholar of his stature come to that? And you know what he said? He said a slightly critical theological grid and a whole lot of homosexual friends.

His experience of life and a and even a light critical approach toward the scripture opened the gate for him to lower the bar to the degree that he was willing to say homosexuals ought to be esteemed as believers alongside all the other Saints.

After all, all Saints struggle with sin on some level. But to the total neglect of statements from Paul that homosexuals and idolaters and others will not inherit the kingdom of God. So I'm watching the lecture from this guy and he says that he's embarrassed about the violence of Yahweh.

Embarrassed about the militaristic advances of Joshua. Embarrassed about the statements of eschatological judgment. Embarrassed about what he coined as the violence of Yahweh. I say with all of his advanced training.

He could not reconcile the mercy of God with the God who will bring down his anger with fury and his rebuke with flames of fire. I understand that this is not an easy subject, but it needs to be prayerfully approached for the Jesus of the Gospels who blessed children and healed all manner of disease is also the Jesus of Isaiah 63 who tramples the nations in his anger.

His mercies and his judgments are intricately linked for they are the expression of his nature full of grace and truth. Therefore Paul writes in Romans 11 behold then the kindness and severity of God to those who fell severity but to you God's kindness if you continue in his kindness otherwise you also will be cut off.

Is this archaic? Is this just some, you know, traditionalist Jewish apocalyptic view that's out of touch with reality and out of touch with who God really is and what his nature is like and how he views mankind and how he views sin and how he views Israel and how he views the nations or have we deviated from the foundational expression of God that has come to us through the prophets and through the Apostles of Scripture and are we in need of a radical recovery of that revelation that we might be the voices in these last days that the Lord has desired the church to be both to Israel and the nations.

Recovering Prophetic Authority and the Fear of the Lord

Have we has our knowledge of God so diminished that we've just become an echo and a a byword and our voice is one opinion amongst many opinions and we've lost the edge and that dynamic that rested upon the prophets of old and men like John the Baptist who could speak to rulers and kings and their ears perked up and their whole kingdom and their whole way and mode of being was threatened by the very presence of one 30-something year old Jewish man who had nothing to his name except fire resting on his soul.

I'm remembering the story of the old I think a Catholic leader when they built a Cathedral you guys might know who it was I don't remember who it was but they built an exquisite Cathedral and they brought it might have been Francis of Assisi or one of those guys they brought him before the Cathedral and said look neither must no longer must we say with Paul with Peter and John silver and gold have we none and then the old Saint replied and neither can we say with them rise up and walk and the wisdom of God has infiltrated the church and we're in need of foundational recovery again.

So I've written here because we have failed to see him as the one who is both fiery and holy we have been reduced to a casual understanding of the gospel and the fear of the Lord is foreign to our common Christian existence.

We make light of sin and we are mostly unwilling to give a real place to the consideration of God's dealings with Israel and the church. I realize the weight of a statement like this and I realize that this subject is vast and fraught with all kinds of perils and misunderstandings but the fact that believers have been satisfied to consider the modern establishment of Israel State the fulfillment of the prophetic scriptures regarding the final return is a disclosure of how hollow our understanding of God is we are not jealous for truth nor jealous for salvation.

So we jump at any apparent fulfillment because the pain of judgment is too difficult to bear. I'm not encouraging some kind of deathly fatalism regarding Israel and this is certainly not an anti-semitic rant.

I'm raising a larger question here we are more patriotic than we are apostolic and our perceptions have been formed much more through media and popular Christian thought than they have through a true and prayerful perusal of the scriptures.

We are eager for convenience much more than we are jealous for truth. What can be said of the church who is called to be the pillar and ground of truth but has failed to obtain a jealousy for truth in her in most parts.

Israel, Jacob’s Trouble, and the Church’s Witness

How does this tie in then with Israel? We mentioned the modern state and the question of whether or not it's the it's the final fulfillment regarding a return to the land. I believe it is a partial fulfillment of certain prophecies but the common teaching has been that it's the final return that there would never be a dispersion of any kind that there would never be even a great suffering upon the land and it seems as if in the 20th century the majority of the Saints who are even saying that any trouble at all would come to Israel were dispensational pre-tribulational men with popular best-selling books.

But where has it been trumpeted that the church has a responsibility in the time of Jacob's trouble as a resurrection witness to the Jew? Well, I'm happy to say that that witness is rising in our day in many locations that I'm aware of even 10 years ago when I began looking into these things you could find hardly anyone at least I could find hardly anyone who was even considering this but I'm seeing in our day.

I think we're seeing these things come to light. So this article is heavy and I don't want to reduce the heaviness of it, but I'm also thankful that it seems as if the Lord is stirring something in the church over the last several years along these lines.

But I still think that there's a need for us to recognize the centrality of what is truly prophetic with regard to the issue of Israel. That's where I still think we're we're walking in an anemic place.

So I go on to write Karl Barth has declared that the church is the only entity with the authority to actually speak of the Lord. But what can be said of the world's conception of him when we ourselves have deviated from or failed to come into a revelation of him as he has set himself forth in the scriptures.

Are we willing to give prayerful contemplation to his declaration of coming judgment upon Israel and upon the nations of the world? It is right to rejoice in the promises of Israel's present salvation as Jewish souls come to faith one by one around the world and to anticipate the glory of the thoughts of their future salvation when a nation will be born in a day at the end of this age.

But not without understanding that the final salvific reality will not be established without a staggering time of purging and sifting as the prophets have declared. I've referenced Amos 9, Jeremiah 30 verse 7, Daniel 12, 1 and 2, Matthew 24, some of the most commonly noted passages pertaining to Jacob's trouble.

Are we expecting this? Have we taken time to pour over the scriptures in this light or is our theological box already sealed and unwilling to make room for this kind of consideration painful though it is?

Who is the God of the scriptures? What is his true heart with regard to the issue of Israel and are we truly in alignment with him along these lines? What a question. Who is the God of the scriptures?

Even this passage Isaiah 66 is a statement of the times to come and we are too apt to celebrate the present state without considering all that the scriptures have declared with regard to the end of this age and Israel's experience in it.

It is much easier to spiritualize or make mystical these kinds of passages for it absolves us from a sense of responsibility to the Jew in the present. I'm going to read that again. It is much easier to spiritualize or make mystical these kinds of passages for it absolves us from a sense of responsibility to the Jew in the present.

Preterism, Replacement Theology, and Israel’s Prophetic Future

I've been in dialogue with some preterists lately and partial preterists and then full preterists and they want to debate and I'm not much of a debater only when I have a special grace for do I even enter into it.

Otherwise, I just move along. But the chief question that I have for those men is how do you reckon with the issue of Israel? Because the majority of them are replacement theologians. How do you reckon with these passages?

You give a glib quotation of things you spiritualize things you make them mystical you apply them all to the church or you just write them off or apply them to AD 70 when the vast majority of these prophetic statements given in the prophets and in in the New Testament regarding Israel's eschatological experience were barely touched at all in AD 70.

You can't make a case if you're really going to give a survey unless you cheapen everything that the prophets have said and put it onto spiritualized grounds rather than taking them seriously and at their at their word and at face value.

It's much easier but maybe underneath the the radical spiritualization of these passages is not so much a good exegetical grid that they're working with but an unconscious anti-semitism or an unconscious desire to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom to the Jew in our day or to identify with the fact that we may have some responsibility of laying our lives down on their behalf in the time leading up to the return of the Lord.

I don't want to make a sweeping statement against all of them in that regard, but I believe that's very prevalent. There's an ant there's an anti-semitism underneath the surface of the church and we think that this whole thing is about our ministries.

It's about our books that are to be sold. It's about our names. It's about the Gentile Church in America. And it has little if any relation to the glory of what the prophets were foreseeing namely the messianic figure the son of David himself ruling and reigning literally from the land and his glory and his law and his word going out from Jerusalem to the nations that they might know God's government.

Preterism truncates and cuts off any expectation for that reality and says no we're in a post-millennial state and we're going to Christianize the whole world and the only significance that the Jew has and that Israel has is that they need the gospel just like any other and yet interestingly enough I find there are very few preterists at least that I've run into who have a real burden for the salvation of the Jew.

So for them that's the only purpose of God for the Jew is that they would hear the gospel and be saved and yet the fervency and the burden for that is often lacking in my experience of interacting with them.

The Pauline Burden for Jewish Salvation

Well, it's that that's the condition of the church across the board. It's not just preterists. We're we've got a dim view and a very light burden for the salvation of Israel and our involvement with the Jew our understanding of the Jews who are in diaspora who are in our cities our burden for those that are in the land for their salvation is often burning very dimly and the Lord is wanting to bring a recovery of that Pauline burden but it's not going to happen immediately.

But we've got to lean into this on a regular basis and be praying into this Lord my jealousy for the salvation of your kinsmen is dim. It's weak. Could you increase the fire of that longing and that jealousy and that burden?

What was it that Paul was possessed with? What was it that marked his life? What was it that caused him to say I am in these chains because of the hope of Israel that even amongst his labors in Rome and in Galatia and in Gentile regions.

He was saying I'm doing all of this and pouring out my blood my sweat and my tears with the hopes that your salvation and your formation into the fullness of Christ would move some of my own kinsmen to jealousy.

For Paul who labored 99 of the time maybe amongst Gentiles once he finally was sent out of Antioch his jealousy was not for the establishment of a ministry or for the establishment of his name or of the First Assembly of Pauline congregations but that the formation of communities of faith in mostly Gentile areas would serve as a foretaste of the kingdom which is to come and would thereby move his own kinsmen to jealousy at least some of them in the days and years leading up to the return of the Lord.

Do we have that jealousy? Are we even considering it? Are we even aware of it? In our day-to-day life? Are we even praying into that? As a church there's pockets where that's happening. But as a church, we're mostly lacking that reality maybe as an entirety and we're in a radical need of recovery.

Prophetic Readings of Zechariah 12–14

It is much easier to spiritualize or make these things mystical for if the present state is the promised return to the land then things must be progressing positively toward the promised end and God must be bringing things to a close.

All this is occurring quite detached from us in our minds and we see no responsibility to weep for the salvation of the Jew nor to make every effort to bring him the gospel nor to live in such a way as would demonstrate the nature of God and the wisdom of God to him thus moving him to jealousy after the God of Abraham.

We are happy to continue building up our deferred comp preparing for retirement or bulking up our all to American ministries to the neglect of our responsibility to the Jew and to the neglect of any consideration of our responsibility to him in the Corrie 10 boom type trials that I'm convinced are on the horizon.

I've been looking at Zechariah 12 through 14 today and I'm wondering why in many commentaries that I've read Zechariah 12 is considered an eschatological passage. Much of Zechariah 14 is considered an eschatological passage.

The beginning of Zechariah 13 is considered considered eschatological but the statements about the in time shakings of that land and of that people are often spiritualized or written off as something that has either been symbolically fulfilled throughout history or must not have a future fulfillment and I think it has everything to do with the fact that our theology has been based on what is convenient and easy for us to build ministries upon and not based on a jealousy for the knowledge of God as he is but Zechariah 12 through 14 is one of the most staggering portions in the scriptures which speak about Israel's last day suffering and the glory of her salvation.

You see we have no jealousy for the glory of her salvation because we don't have any understanding of the depth of her sin nationally or the price that will be required for that purgation to take place that will bring about her salvation.

David Baron, Adolf Saphir, and the Purging of Israel

You guys read David Barron. David Barron and Adolf Saphir if you can get a hold you can get a hold of their writings. I would recommend them. David Barron lived from 1857 to 1926 and he ministered primarily in London.

He was a messianic Jewish preacher and theologian passed away in 1926. I'm going to read from him and I'm going to read a little bit from Adolf Saphir who lived from 1831 to 1891 also a messianic Jew and a kind of revival preacher and theologian he was he was born in Hungary and he pastored for 27 years in Glasgow and London but just these two guys I'm not I've not found anything like what they've written and they were quite intellectual men, but they wrote in very simple terms and they were messianic Jews before the establishment of the modern state of Israel who had a view of the scriptures.

I'm wondering if it didn't come directly from the Holy Spirit because the kinds of things they wrote about were not commonly spoken of in their day. Charles Spurgeon said that Adolf Saphir was one of the greatest preachers of his day, but he was a messianic Jew proclaiming the word primarily in London, but listen to what David Barron says in this booklet the Jewish problem and its solution now remember he passed away in 1926.

So this is 22 years before the establishment of the modern state of Israel. He says the great ordeal described in Ezekiel 22 17 through 22 the melting of the metal of Israel in judgment. He says that great ordeal ends in their salvation.

But listen to this. He says it is clear that there is a time of purging by fiery judgment awaiting Israel after the return to their land by which will immediately proceed their national conversion and the revelation to them of the Messiah whom as a nation they have so long rejected.

He writes this years before he wrote this 60 years before so he wrote this in the late 1800s 60 years before modern Israel was established. What have we I'm sorry what we have in the last chapters of Zechariah is this Israel in their land not necessarily the entire nation, but the bulk of it evidently restored in a state of unbelief.

So in the late 1800s David Barron based on his interpretation of the prophetic scriptures was anticipating a return to the land mostly in a state of unbelief of many many Jews that he said would set the context for a final judgment and purging that would result in their eschatological salvation and an establishment of that people in the land that would never be destroyed or removed or affected again.

He goes on to say this Oh fellow Christians time is short already there are abundant signs that long scattered and long neglected Israel is hastening back to his land to pass through air long that fiery ordeal and furnace awaiting him in Zion.

Most of the people in his day were either post-millennial or dispensationalists who believed in a pre-tribulational rapture but here is a post-tribulational messianic Jew proclaiming that a return to the land is taking place in his day that he believed was the fulfillment of Ezekiel 22 verses 17 through 22 that would set up the context of his own kinsmen in the land which would eventuate into a time of judgment and trial and fire about which Isaiah 66 is speaking Jeremiah 30 is speaking Daniel 12 is speaking Matthew 24 is speaking Zechariah 12 through 14 is speaking Amos 9 is speaking.

Have we considered these portions of Scripture and and if we've considered them what has been our conclusion. I'm convinced that the majority of Saints who will lay their souls low before these passages cross-reference them pray through them give themselves to fasting and prayer will come to conclusions similar to what these men came to and I'm not breaking fellowship with Saints who come to different conclusions but I'm convinced of this after 10 years of looking into this myself listen to what he says already there are abundant signs that long-scattered and long-neglected Israel is hastening back to his land to pass through air long that fiery ordeal and furnace awaiting him in Zion.

He talks about the Zionist movement and he goes on to say perhaps the most significant fact in this connection is the now almost universally known and rapidly spreading Zionist movement which seems destined after centuries of dispersion to bind all the scattered fragments of the people into one national force with their ostensible aim of regaining possession of the land of their fathers.

Did you catch that with their ostensible aim of regaining possession of the land of their fathers. What does ostensible mean? It means their hopeful aim it could almost mean their presumptuous aim that we're going to go back reestablish the state reestablish a government that will be fitting to our mode of being that we prefer but the vast majority of them setting that thing into motion without having returned to the God of their fathers wanting to regain possession of the land of their fathers without yet returning to the God of their fathers.

This is the prophetic distinctive. This is the prophetic call that a people would be in the earth who would bear a jealousy enough for the glory of God and the knowledge of God that they would not be satisfied with skeletal fulfillments of the scripture but would instead desire a full-orbed fulfillment that would result in the glorification of God and the earth ultimately the return of his son and the salvation of the people Israel the establishing of his government in the earth in reality from Jerusalem and unto the nations.

Barron sums this up by asking the question of the church who will be up and doing who will rise to the Lord's help against the mighty who by their prayers and substance will help to carry the gospel message to poor scattered Israel.

The Church’s Calling to Prayer and Gospel Proclamation

This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations and then the end shall come. So Barron gives his interpretation of the prophets and says that Israel the Jewish people are returning to the land in an ostensible aim at recovering and repossessing the land of their fathers.

But then he says who shall be up and doing doing what sitting around making theories about eschatological Israel. In his mind he says the church's chief calling to Israel in the time leading up to that for up to that return is prayer and proclamation of the gospel of the kingdom.

That's how Barron sums it up. So how much is the church in our day given to a true intercession for that people Israel to a true burden in prayer to an identification at least on some level with Paul's statement that he was broken and even willing to see his own soul accursed that his own kinsmen might be saved.

We've not come into that because we've not been willing to consider it and most of our preachers have not been willing to give themselves to it that by the grace of God they might be able to pastor and help the Saints come into these kinds of things without being intimidated without seeing them as irrelevant without feeling too heavy about it that they can't even approach it.

We've not had the wisdom because we've not even asked the Lord for that wisdom. And an hour is now upon us where that wisdom will be required of us. And if we're not bearing that wisdom as the oil of the five wise virgins we may be found in that company who would when the greater shakings come fall away out of disillusionment because our knowledge of God was made up of something that we have configured or men have configured and given to us as a mere echo and it has not come out from the place of communion and from the place of scripture and from the from the grit and knit of real living in this life of faith.

We'll get to that in a minute. I want to read a brief portion from Adolf Saphir. We're actually doing pretty good on time. This mean I've never known another man to write quite like Adolf Saphir if you can get his books get a hold of them commentary on the Hebrews a book on the hidden life of prayer a book on the Lord's Prayer.

He's got Christ and Israel. He's got another one Christ and the scriptures when you when you bump into a guy like this raised as a Hungarian Jew and then coming to faith in his Messiah who has then given himself to prayer and long hours of study and proclamation of the word.

There's a wealth that is there that even Spurgeon as as considered to be the Prince of Preachers would raise up Adolf Saphir for our consideration as a gift to the body but listen to this as a matter of fact, let me go back to my article for a moment.

Israel’s Restoration Through Judgment and Grace

We need to lay another statement for what Adolf Saphir is going to give us. I raised the question in the article do we wish for Israel to be restored on the grounds of man-centered politics? Is our knee-jerk celebration of the modern state a revelation that we are somehow self-sufficient in our Christianity and therefore want the self-sufficiency of the modern state to go on so that our own Christian ministries and our own egotistical names in ministry can be carried on?