Arab-01 Israel in the Last Days — Art Katz

I'm feeling especially privileged this morning as a Jewish believer.

And as a believer, I used to be a believer in the Lord Jesus. This is a privilege for me, very good.

To address my Arab cousins.

To address my Arab cousins As brothers.

As brothers Amen. The wonderful grace that has come to us in the Messiah Jesus.

The wonderful grace that has come to us in the Messiah Jesus. And the only grace that will favor us all.

A Prophetic Message to the Arab Church

I came to a conclusion in this present visit about preaching in Jerusalem. That we have come to such an hour, and such a time, historically. that the only kind of message that really is appropriate is a prophetic message.

I intend to bring you one this morning, the same one that I brought 2 years ago, 7 times in this land, and 3 times in Jerusalem, but I have to say I think I've been essentially rejected. But it's still my burden this morning, and it's my first opportunity to preach it to an Arab congregation,.

And to trust the Lord to bring out the particular implications. For Arab believers, that may be the more ultimate and radical requirement than for any other. It's a requirement of such a kind that requires the Arab church to be the church indeed.

No longer sufficient to lurk in the shadows and to be a kind of a cultural or generational religious entity with an authentic apostolic presence.

And it's the issue of Israel that requires, to get such a maximum benefit from the information even in its unbelief.

All the more in its unbelief of the challenger as the church. And we will be increasingly tested and challenged by Israel in its present condition.

It's a condition I'm not expecting to increase.

It's one that I expect will worsen and worsen unto death. Like blindness, it's a sickness unto death.

It's an order to glorify God and the Son of God. Nothing less than resurrection issues in your life.

That's true for the church, and it's true for the nation.

The difficulty for us is the death that precedes resurrection.

And I want to suggest a perspective by which we can view the present calamity or perplexity of Israel.

Let's take into account what happened to this country. What happened in the revolutions that are taking place in this country. The words of the international agreements are full of peace and there is no hope.

Have you ever seen a nation in a more intractable position? That whichever way it turns, it is in such a state of perplexity that even you cannot find solutions. And I want to submit that God is the marker of every perplexity.

And I want to tell you that God puts this country in every perplexity. I want to tell you that God causes all these things, not by chance, but with a precise judgment, to bring this country to its destination and to expose it to the Lord Jesus Christ.

And we ourselves, who are sympathetic and lovers of Israel, stand the risk of being offended by God in how far he will go to offend us. The problem is with us and not with God. We have not understood the issue of his glory.

And how far he will go to attain it. It is the issue of his eternal glory,.

Although the effecting of it takes place in the last days of time. There is something in God's intention much more than an acceptable Israeli state. A nation that will bless all the families of the earth.

And even here I am struggling for words. Because the word bless itself has become so cheapened in our own generation. I am not talking about some condescending Israeli who wants to make nice to his Arab brethren.

I am not talking about a transfigured nation that will be to the nations what Paul was to the Gentiles. I want this country to return to God and to change, so that according to the idea of Paul the Apostle, this country will become a glory to God and to the others.

So that these brethren, or enemies, who stand against the existing ideas,.

If they think that they will see our face no more. This is a transfiguring glory. And requires something ultimately from the church. And the text that God has quickened for me that encompasses all this is Ezekiel 37.

The Valley of Dry Bones and Israel's Future Restoration

The valley of dry bones. I won't take the time to read the entire text, it is familiar to most of us. The only question for us really is it a picture of Israel's past or Israel's future? Some suggest that it is a statement of Israel's past in the time of the holocaust.

At a time when we were literally reduced to bones. But there are some indications in the text, if it is read carefully, that suggests to me it speaks of a future time.

A time for which we are now attending, for which the nation itself is being prepared in the important time.

If we don't understand that, we will join the chorus of the nations against Israel for their failure to be the nation that they hoped to be. But it is not a nation that they can be independent of God.

It is not Jewish expertise and ability and prowess that will bless the nations. It is the very character and spirit of God himself that becomes the character of the nation when it is resurrected out of its own death.

That is why I am not expecting a resolution of Israel's present difficulties.

I believe that they are calculated by God to bring the nation down. So that God might raise it up.

For the fulfillment of its own Abrahamic calling. And of its own millennial destiny. Don't tell me that this is a nation like any other nation. And it has no special consideration of God. Unless this nation says, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the Lord does not come.

For when he comes, he comes as king. And the only place where that rule can be established. Upon the throne of David on the hill of Zion in the city of Jerusalem. In a land and in a nation that has been restored to him by the work of his own hand.

In that day you will know that I am the Lord who has both spoken and performed. Nothing in Israel's present history till this moment has brought that awareness. We are in a new and final historical moment.

The issue of God is no longer a Sunday or Saturday matter. We need to anticipate the divine intervention of very God. The establishment of a theocratic rule over the nation. According to God's own choosing.

That the law of the Lord shall go forth out of Zion and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem.

And from Jerusalem and from this land to the world for repentance and return. When we allow the world not to be in a war against us. When we allow, as it is written in Aramaic, their swords to be the swords of peace.

When we allow. But what precedes that then?

The Church's Role in Israel's Restoration

The final cataclysmic clash of the powers of darkness and light. Of which we the church are the principal actors and agents.

The restored Israel is God's work. By the way, the revival and return of the people in this country is God's work. God wants to restore them. But they are not the ones who restore their souls. It is the church that restores them.

It can never be like that. No one in Jews as we do.

We can never be the architects of our own salvation. It must be something that comes to us from outside. Something external to us. And a source that we would never have suspected. For whom we have had historic disdain and contempt.

Gentiles. The church. Arabs. Christians. I wish we had a three day seminar for this. But time requires me to get right to the heart of the matter. Israel is hopeless and inert according to this chapter.

Verse 11. These bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say our bones are dried, our hope is lost, we are cut off for our parts. Tell me when you have heard that statement recently or historically coming from the Jewish nation.

Tell me when you have heard that statement recently or historically coming from the Jewish nation.

I am going to stretch my brother's Arabic to the point of breaking. There is something about us Jews that is indomitable. That will not say uncle. We will not give up. There is something about us that we pull ourselves up from our own bootstraps.

If we miss this point, we miss the whole point.

If the Holocaust itself was not sufficient to evoke this national cry of absolute helplessness and abject dejection, what will?

If the Holocaust itself was not sufficient to evoke this national cry of absolute helplessness and abject dejection, what will? It will come. By whatever means God will require it.

It will shred us who will be here to observe it. To bring that nation to such a place of absolute hopelessness.

We are without hope.

What is the national anthem of Israel? Particular the hope. But the hope in what? Any hope that is not hope in God is false hope. However much we are endeared to that nation and love the chorus of Hatikvah, we need to understand that God is too jealous over his own glory to allow this nation to be sustained on a false hope.

So we stood up and tried to encourage and help our country in this or that. God is jealous. God is jealous of his heart that we put our hope on the human power or the physical power and not our hope in God.

God is jealous. God is sad. I boldly predict that this prophecy or this realization will come soon.

And all of Israel's present distresses are moving her to that place. What has been our national dream when we were in the diaspora, in exile? If ever we would have a Jewish nation, we would show the world what a distinctive nation that convocation would be.

For we fancy ourselves as having a distinctive as Jews, namely of an ethical and a moral kind. It is easy to imagine that for ourselves while we are in the exile, in the ghetto, in diaspora. But what has the reality of our recent national life revealed?

That power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. We have no distinctive different from other nations.

We don't know what we need to do in order to preserve our national existence.

Even if such conduct contradicts what we thought our state to be.

Even if such conduct contradicts our true existence.

That revelation must come. Or else we will not cry out, we are without hope. Our God is waiting to hear it. And the moment that he does, he turns to one who is called the son of man. And he commands him, he says, prophesy to these ones.

Say unto them in verse 12. Say unto the Lord God, behold all my people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves and bring you into the land of Israel. You may have brought yourself previously.

But my bringing you will be exclusively my work and supernaturally empowered.

Thank you Lord, I am the Lord who has spoken.

There cannot be any question for the Israel of the millennium.

There cannot be any question for the Israel of the millennium. Because God alone is the one who saves and delivers. And the deliverance that comes with the power of God and not with the power of the state or the power of man.

And only so that he may express his words in order to fulfill his power. But through a son of man. Whom he employs to speak the word of God. To a nation dead in its grave.

Without hopeless. Waiting for whatever mercy can come to it outside of itself. And this is where my precious Arab brethren come in. If you were the son of man would you prophesy? What an opportunity to allow Israel to remain in her grave.

The Jewish people, the Jews of Israel and the people of this country are all in the grave. Imagine that your word, O you who know Christ and believe in Christ, can save them from their punishment. But you would be a fool to speak it.

Haven't you suffered enough at her hands?

In violence and injury and insult and humiliation? Everything that's human in you will say, serve the right, let her remain. I want to say that Ezekiel 37 shows that God has not just an exclusive interest in Israel's restoration, but also in the transfiguration of a church.

Hallelujah. What you desire to do in that moment. What you are able to do in that moment. Is the whole issue of Israel's restoration. Helpless and waiting on your word. And what a word it must be. An ultimate word.

A prophetic word in all authority. And a faith that works alone by it. I ask. All the depths of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. Who has been his counselor? Son of man, can these bones live?

Do you desire that they should? Isn't everything that is human in you remembering every insult and humiliation? Isn't there something in the Arab temperament that wants retaliation and vengeance and justice?

Can you be the agent of mercy? The agent of mercy. Son of man. It is not something that will be decided in that final moment. It is something that is being required now. As every justification for resentment rises.

Every justification for enmity and resistance has risen now. And you face it daily. Jewish contempt. Israeli contempt. High handed policies. Arrogance.

The use of force or insult. Everything calculated to produce anger, bitterness, resentment. Son of man, can these bones live?

And do you desire that they would?

The Arab Church's Test of Authentic Faith

It is an ultimate challenge to the Arab church. And I praise God that the historical hour has come. For the condition of the Arab church is well known in Christendom. Christians by circumstance of birth.

You are Christians because your parents were. It is a social and cultural condition. It is rare to find authentic Arab believers.

But we want or desire the true Arab believer.

The issue of Israel is for you. The issue of authenticity. What can you expect if you begin to exhibit a mercy toward that nation? You will be called a traitor.

Your neck will get hot with embarrassment.

Everything that is powerful and national and traditional and natural will tug at you. What is your first identity? Arab or believer? What is your deepest identification? With the people of God in their apostasy and hateful condition?

Your tormentor and oppressor? Or the people of your own nationality and ethnic group and race? This is an issue that we as Jews have had to face in coming to Christ. And we are all going to be required to face it.

To stand with Israel is to suffer her reproach. It is to raise the question of what is our first identification? Natural, earthly or spiritual? Do we join the angry chorus of the haters of Israel and of the Jews?

Or recognize in them and in their extremity the chosen people of God called to a millennial destiny? This is the question that is before us now. It will compel us either to be Christians of an apostolic kind or to stand with God's purposes for Israel as an Arab is to invite oppression, persecution and martyrdom.

And we will not be far behind you and that will be our issue also. In the age of Antichrist, martyrdom will be the condition of the church. Are we Christianized Arabs? Or Arabs who are Christians? What is the reality and the truth in our deepest and the short term?

What will rise and reveal itself in the moment of extremity and challenge? The crisis will reveal the truth of where and what we are. To identify ourselves with this nation and the last days purposes of God is to invite retaliation.

By a people who cannot be expected to understand our identification. You will not be able to explain yourself. You simply have to suffer their wrath. This is my experience with my own people as a Jewish believer.

University confrontations and other times of clash with radical Jews. They say you are worse than Hitler.

Hitler only sought to destroy our bodies. You are trying to destroy our souls. You are trying to remove our Jewishness. You are trying to make Christians out of us. You are some paid flunky. You are a missionary.

What do you answer them on? What do you answer them? You can't answer. In the heat of that moment no answer is possible. You have only to absorb their fury. Absorb their anger. Absorb their prejudice.

Their misunderstanding. Let them spend themselves on you.

Then when they have ventilated their fury you might get a word in. We have just come back from Egypt and spoke from Isaiah 19 to the believers there. Yes, there is an altar that shall be raised up in the middle of the land in the name of the Lord.

It will be a key to the turning of the entire nation. But it is an altar of sacrifice from the blood of martyrs who may suffer that because of their identification with the nation that is hated because of the historical conflict between the two.

God is calling us beyond nationality. The issue of Israel becomes the issue of the church everywhere. True church. True church. Of an apostolic and prophetic church. A radical presence in its community.

And the word that comes from it constitutes event.

Because it is spoken with one heart, one mind and one life. Not a people who would be grudging. I guess I have to. Yes, but you said so.

I have a religious obligation. I don't like it, but I guess I have to. Can you imagine Jesus in that spirit addressing Lazarus in the tomb? The word that came forth out of his mouth was a creative event.

Because the one who is now stinking was the friend whom he loved. Because the one who is now stinking.

Was the friend whom he loved.

You don't understand our circumstances.

You are not an Arab, you are not a Jew. We are in very difficult circumstances here.

What you are suggesting is beyond us.

It is enough just to be polite to these people.

I should believe for their resurrection? And desire it? And speak it with an absoluteness of love?

A faith that works by love?

That is more than just condescension and acknowledgement? This is beyond me. Exactly. This is not only Israel's restoration over which God is jealous. But your transfiguration. A church indeed in all apostolic fullness.

Because it loves what God loves and it chooses what He chooses. It will not limit the Holy One of Israel to the curse of its personal experience or what it has suffered at the hands of the other. Ultimate Church.

Fitted for its own eternal destiny. By the final prophetic maturity to which Israel requires it. Hallelujah. Amen. Brother, speak English, brother. My goodness. Hallelujah. It will not only require death then, it will require death now.

Only a people who know the reality of resurrection can be the voice of resurrection.

This is beyond religion.

Even of a charismatic kind. And we ourselves must be the people of the resurrection. And not merely approve its doctrine.

Not even to correct their doctrine or to confirm it. Because we have not experienced the resurrection of God and the power of God to protect us from the death of our sins. This is more than planting a tree in Israel.

We want to see where the depth of your love is. And I want to say that.

A mere identification with Israel however pure and lowly is not enough. There is an issue greater than Israel. Greater than the Church. Both of these are only means to a greater end.

A means to a greater end. The glory of the Lord Jesus Christ is greater than anything.

Glory. Amen. I will be sanctified through you O Israel before the face of the whole world. Not for your sake do I do this.

But for my glory and my request. And that is not our jealousy.

And the source of our conduct and our life. We will fall short of God's requirements. This jealousy for God's glory will cost much. But this is the time. It is not enough to be a believer charismatically or nationally but to be Christ-like.

Out of a compassion that is His for the very people who have abused us is the statement of the unconditional love of God. Beyond anything that we have known. The faith that believes for dry bones to live is beyond any faith today.

We have come to come to the place where we say for us to live as Christ.

And what keeps us from that identification? We are Arab Christians. We are Jewish Christians.

There is always something hyphenated and joined together. There is always something that prevents us from being mixed together. God calls us to Himself. Have you noticed how this text ends? You shall know that I am the Lord in verse 13 when I have opened your graves O my people and brought you out of your graves.

You shall know that I am the Lord.

In verse 13. When I have opened your graves and brought you out of your graves O my people and brought you out of your graves I shall put my spirit in you and you shall live I shall place you in your land then you shall know that I am the Lord.

That I the Lord have spoken it and performed it. This is either careless biblical terminology.

I have spoken it and performed it or it is the heart of the mystery itself. How can a God of truth say I have spoken and performed it when the Son of Man spoke it.

Because He has brought His people to a place beyond itself. Their speaking is His speaking His love is their love His faith is their faith His obedience is their obedience.

A true church.

Can alone be Israel's deliverer against every national and natural factor to the contrary. For us the issue of Israel is the issue of God.

It is the issue of the church.

It will be unto Him as glory forever and not a quaint and cute curio for visitors in Israel an awesome apostolic and prophetic entity as it was in the first where Israel remains in her grave and the nations of the earth remain unblessed.

The Arab nations of the earth.

Waiting for a resurrected nation to come to them.

The same purity and power as Paul.

Who was born before his time a figure of the restored nation in its apostolate blessing all the families of the earth to the eternal praise of His glory. We are caught together in this mystery and the hour is now I am going to give you an invitation to die to your national feelings.

To your justifiable resentment to the bitternesses that you wanted and still be Christian all the depths of the wisdom of the knowledge of God God is calling you by name to be His a son of man to prophesy in that name let's pray.

Prayer for the Arab Church's Calling

Hallelujah Hallelujah.

Yes Gracious God. We ask that history be worked this morning in keeping with all the holy apostolic and prophetic things.

That have preceded us in keeping with all the holy apostolic and prophetic things that have preceded us.

As we see.

How this place is surrounded by witnesses who are not yet complete without us. Hallelujah we may have to share them at the hand of our own outraged people.

Opposing themselves in their own ignorance even my soul persecuted the early church to make ourselves candidates for persecution to stand with God and His purposes for Israel. In an hour when hatred is rising against them everywhere we will be called traitor.

O God, we may not be as people think and we may not be able to explain.

But we are a crown of eternal life.

I pray to you O God whether or not it is required.

We are not talking how you shall die in a final moment.

But how you shall live in all your moments when you leave this room.

And get jostled by an Israeli soldier on your way to the Damascus Gate.

Or they spit or curse at you or give you a dirty look and give you every reason to leave the land. But you have a purpose here beyond your knowing.

And it has not to do with your rights. What rights do any of us have who have been brought back from the dead no longer to live unto ourselves. You are here for God's glory and not to claim your ancestral land.

Settle it in your heart. Are you an Arab who happens to be a Christian. Or a Christian who happens to be an Arab. God's glory alone. Whatever it takes to obtain it is our determination. Who will say yes to God for this.

Allow Him to deal with your heart. Bring you into deaths of humiliation.

Humiliation and humiliation. You do not know that in our hearts there is pride and arrogance or the fear of man but God will cleanse it and bring it to the cross so that you may be His and His voice and His words in these days will be eternally grateful for you.

Your faith raised us from our graves. It will take eternity to express our faith and to celebrate the God whose wisdom has called for it who will stand for martyrdom today. That was always the true identity of the church in every generation and must especially be in the last.

Whether you are from New Zealand or Canada or you are an Arab an Israeli Palestinian born our call is one thing.

Have you answered that call? I invite you to stand if you will once and for all.

Unto death. Hallelujah Amen Hallelujah Amen Hallelujah Hallelujah. And not reluctantly with sadness not with that self pity. Cry, why me? Couldn't I have been a nice Arab Christian without this? He's not called you to what is nice.

He's called you to what is glorious. God see us this morning. Thank you for sending this word. Let the cassette of it go far and wide through the Arab speaking world where there are bewildered believers who don't understand what their call is who have been drawn into the sea of hatred and bitterness and resentment.

Grant them my God the veil to be removed to see the beauty and the holiness of their calling that eventuates in your glory forever. Feel us in our standing. Bring the process of death into our life where it is.

Find us out in the subtlety of our life there might be a men and women of the resurrection.

Whose word is event even life from the death for the blessing of all nations in Jesus name we pray Amen.