When God's Hand Moves — Emanuel Esh

Blessings to you all. Welcome here. Jesus came into the temple and He threw out the money changers and those that sold in the temple there. And He said, take these things out. You've made it a house of debt and robbers.

He said, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all people. And so as we begin here, I'd like for us to stand together and pray. I wonder what your thoughts are about that. Jesus said, My house shall be called a house of prayer of all people.

And when people look at this church, what do they say about it? And when you think about coming to church, what do you think about doing? Is it a house of fellowship? Or is it a house of fun and games?

What is it? And when people go to visit there, they talk about when they want to go there, they'll say, oh, that's where we go to do... But this is so clearly, it should be that when people think about it, that they would say, oh, that's where people pray.

It's a house of prayer. It's a place where people worship. One of the things that made it easy for us when we changed from the Amish church to the Charity Church was that there was a spirit of reverence here.

We would come in in the morning and there was a blessing there. There was a spirit of reverence and honor to God. And I miss that. Sometimes I almost think it sounds like a market. I know it's good to fellowship, but Jesus said it shall be called a house of prayer.

Father, we come to You. We know it's Your heart's desire that this place be called a house of prayer. Forgive us, Lord, where we have not brought honor to You. Teach us what it means to come to the house of prayer.

And Lord, make it a house of prayer for all people, all nations. A place where we pray for all people. A place where all those people can feel free to come and be a part of. And we lift up Jesus Christ here this morning and give honor and praise and worth to You, O Lord, for You are good.

Your mercies endure forever. And You have reached down and You've placed Your Spirit into these physical human bodies and given us a part of Yourself that we might walk in holiness and purity before You all the days of our life.

Father, may Your grace rest upon us here today. I pray that Your blessing will be upon us. Lord, I don't mean to be scolding anyone, but O God, I long that we'd be a house of prayer for all nations. I thank You, Father.

Thank You, Lord. If we could sing together that we place You in the highest place. And maybe the second time we could do the echo. Tim, could you lead us in that? What worship does is when we gather together, we're lining up with who God is.

And we come together, we have lots of things in our minds and lots of problems and issues. But as we cast those things aside, our spirit lines up with God's Spirit. And that's what worship is. Let's sing that again one more time, Jim.

Prayer, Worship, and the Refugee Crisis

Two or three are gathered in My name. There I am in the midst. Thank You, Lord. Thank You, Lord. Now, Father, bless Your Word into our hearts today. Quicken our hearts by Your Spirit. Give us vision. Give us dreams.

As we cast aside the things of this earth and look at the things of heaven, and the kingdom of God. Thank You in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. It's now two years ago that in September, October, that the refugee crisis in Europe was at its height.

There was up to 5 ,000 and 6 ,000 refugees crossing the sea into Turkey every day into Greece. And nobody was prepared for it. And that's when we got involved there two years ago, and have been involved there since.

Recognizing God's Hand in the Movement of Nations

I don't know what to call this message, this report, but one thing that has really stood out in my heart is that when God moves His hand, we understand that God can raise up a nation and He can pull down a nation.

And He does those things. And when He moves His hand, something happens. And when we see such large masses of people moving, then we know that God is moving His hand. God is doing something. And that's the thing that quickened our hearts two years ago as we saw this happening.

And we simply tried to avail ourselves to work with what God is doing as He moves His hand. There are so many things in my heart, I don't know where to begin. But we just got back about a week and a half ago.

I got back a week and a half ago after three months in Greece and a week in Iraq. I'd like to turn to Isaiah chapter 11 to begin with here. This chapter generally is speaking about what happens when a rod comes out of the stem of Jesse and a root grows, a branch grows out of its roots.

It's a picture of the church. And so often we have, I have, and maybe you have too, is we've placed this chapter into the thousand year reign or the time of when peace shall rule and reign on the earth, when the lamb shall live together with the wolf and the leopard and the kid will lie down together and the cow and the bear will eat together and their young ones will be together and you have the fatling and the young calf and you have a young lion there together and so the child shall lead them.

But I would like for us to think a little bit differently today that this is the results of the church that if the church of Jesus Christ would be who she is meant to be, then this would be the effects in the lamb.

It says the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, upon this branch that grows out of Jesse, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, and the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord and shall make him of a quick understanding in the fear of the Lord and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears, but judge with righteousness and so on.

And the result of this branch is peace. When you look in the book of Daniel, you see the he-goat and you have the ram there in Daniel chapter maybe nine or 10, I'm not sure, or seven or eight. And we know that the prophecies about the he-goat and the prophecies about that ram had to do with certain nations.

The he-goat actually was the nation of Greece, which would come and destroy, which would take over that part of the world. This he-goat would be a very quick and fast army. And that's the picture of that.

So we know that in that book, we see these animals are depicted as nations. Have you ever looked at this passage of scripture as maybe depicting the nations? And so we're standing over there on a mountain in Iraq.

Nineveh, Jonah, and the Nations Represented by Animals

They're just a couple miles outside of Nineveh, the ancient Nineveh called Mosul. And it looks like a flat piece of land from there going. When you go into the book of Jonah, it says that he entered into Nineveh a day's journey.

And this was an exceeding great city of three days journey. How big do you think it was? I don't know how big three, I don't know what a day's journey was at that time, but it says a three days journey.

And we're about, we're probably 15 miles outside of the center of Mosul there. And I'm looking around and we're probably on the first mountain on that plain. And I'm actually thinking maybe this is where Jonah sat under that vine.

And he waited to see what God would do. I don't know if we were in that place or not, but at least we thought about that. But at that time of Syria, the Syrian army was the most feared and the most destructive army around.

They were a horrible people. They were a horrible nation. And when they captured their enemies, they did some of the most inhuman things to kill them. They were the utmost barbaric army around. And everybody feared them.

I don't need to tell you what they did. But that spirit is still in the land. The atrocities that ISIS did as they took control of those cities is horrible. And so if I draw this wolf and this leopard and this lion and this bear on the board and we give them names, what would we name them?

We actually did this. They were there on a Sunday morning. We named them ISIS and we named them the Iraqi army and the Ashkeshabis and all these type of things. And then we put names on the cows and the calf and the goat and the kid.

We named them like the Yazidi Christians and the Syrian Christians and the other Christians. And what if God would want the church, the influence of the church in that place to dominate in such a way that these animals would all feed and lay down together.

The Church's Absence and the Call to Serve Refugees

But the church is not there. The church of Jesus Christ is not there. The fact is there are dozens and dozens of camps in the surrounding area of that ancient Nineveh. Tens of thousands of people in each camp.

In some places, hundred thousand people in a camp. And there is hardly any Christian witness there at all. One of the men that we were with, he said we could use a thousand young people to come and serve in these camps right now.

In fact, he said we could use five thousand. What if there would be a thousand young people sold out to God that could go over there right now and minister and serve in those camps and would begin to pray and preach the Word of God.

And I believe that the wolf would then live together with the lamb. The bear would eat with the cow. The lion would eat straw and whatever. But where are the young people? Years ago, I remember Brother Denny preaching a message called Where Are the Men?

It was a call for the men to rise up and to be men in their homes, godly men, raise up godly families. He based it out of the Old Testament of David's mighty men who had been at war for many years and they came home and began to raise up a godly seed.

That, I've never forgotten that message. And so we were over there in Greece this summer in the month of August and September. We didn't have enough help. We didn't have enough young men and young ladies to help us.

And our teams got really tired. They're working 10 and 12 hour days, some of them 14, 16 hours, almost every day. And I'm thinking, where are the young men? Where are the youth? And what are they doing?

And I want to bless this congregation and the youth here for having a vision and for going out. I know many of you have traveled and many of you are going. And I want to bless you for that. And I believe that almost all of you have a vision for serving in the kingdom of God.

And I want to thank God for that. As I thought of it in general, my thoughts went to 50 years ago during the Vietnam War. I was about seven years old and we made a trip one day down to Baltimore Hospital.

My uncle was down there as a CO working in a hospital for two years. And we went to visit him. And that's a stand out in my mind. And my parents told me why he's in the hospital. They told me that it's because he doesn't want to go to war and that the U .S. government has made an option for the Christians to serve in a hospital instead of going to war.

And that left a mark in my mind. But in those days, during the draft, the U .S. government could call up the young men between the age of 18 and 25 and they were forced to go into service. And so many of the Anabaptists and the plain young people also were drafted and they also had to go.

And so they had the option of serving in the CO camps, non-violent, non-combatant places for the government. And they very gladly gave two years of free service to the U .S. government. They left their homes, their jobs, their wives, their friends, their girlfriends, and they went and gave two years for the U .S. government.

A Two-Year Vision for Christian Service

Now let me ask you, what are the young men doing today? We have approximately 35 ,000 Amish in Lancaster County. If you take about 14 of them into the age bracket between 18 and 25, you come up with about 5 ,000 young people who will be eligible for the draft.

What do you think they're doing? If we look at the Mennonites in the U .S. alone, in 2013 it was 350 ,000. Take about 14 of that and you come up with 50 ,000 young people in this age bracket. Let me ask you, what are the young men doing?

Jesus said in Luke 16, He said, "...the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.". And when those young men are drafted in the U .S. Army, they get several weeks of training or a month or two maybe, and then they are sent wherever their boss tells them to go and they are to do whatever they are told to do.

No questions asked. They endure all kinds of hardship. They're actually trained to lay down their lives for their country and they're not afraid to do it. What are the young men doing today? I believe the majority are living at home with their parents if they're not married.

A large percent of them are earning a high wage, own at least one or two vehicles, anywhere from $5 ,000 to $50 ,000. What is their goal? What are they living for? Maybe get married. Probably have a successful business.

Oh yeah, they want to be part of a good church. We're living in a realm where time is money and money is power. Should we blame the young men? They're doing what they've seen others do. They're doing that which is the norm.

They're doing that which is expected of them. Maybe we fathers, church leaders, if there's anybody going to do something about it, it's up to us. Maybe we should make a way for them. Maybe we should chart a course for them.

What if we would envision a two-year track for our young men and young ladies? You sign your name on the dotted line and we'll tell you what to do for two years. We'll take you. And the U .S. Army has a goal to brainwash the people.

They take you all apart and then they put you together the way they want you to be put together and you become a killing machine. That's what it is. What if we'd have a two-year track where we would have some good training?

A month or two of good training. Three months in Greece. Give you another week or two of training. Send you three months to Iraq. Another week or two of training. Bring you back to Greece for three months and we just put you wherever we want you to be.

Maybe we send you over to... Right now there's a need in Yemen. There's a war there. Lots of people are starving. There's a need in Bangladesh. The 400 ,000 Rohingya have been driven out of their land.

Nobody wants them. And somebody should go there and minister to them. What would God have us to do in that area? That's one of the burdens in my heart. Well, let me go back a little bit more about the work in Greece.

The Growth of the Church in Greece

Thank you all for your support and there in prayer and in encouragement. We were there last year about six months and God was doing amazing things there, but we had to go home. So we came home in November of last year and I left there.

I left the island there and God was doing amazing things. In those three months, we had just started having church before we got there and we had a church building probably not quite half this size. No, not half this size.

Maybe the bench side up here probably. That's about how big it is. And we had started having church on Sunday morning there. We had about 20 people there and when we got there, but in three months time, that place totally packed out of people of many nations.

And it was very, very hard to leave. God was doing wonderful things. People were getting saved. People were getting baptized. Muslims were coming to Christ and God was doing marvelous things. But we had to leave and so I left there in November of last year and seven months later this past June, we went back.

I was wondering what's the church going to be like when I get back? Will they still be alive? When we get back there on the first Sunday, I went to church there. And the church house filled up with many nationalities.

Probably between 10 and 20 different people groups, languages, kindreds, people, nations. And they packed this whole place out sitting on the floor. They're sitting there waiting for the service to begin.

And when we had left seven months earlier, we were struggling with languages and they didn't know English very well and the singing was very poor. But seven months later, they had learned songs and had learned some English.

And they began to sing Amazing Grace. And I sat there just bawling because I knew that God was in control. They had three or four different pastors since I had been there who had led the church. God was there.

That was so exciting, so exhilarating, but yet it's also very humiliating or very humbling to realize that God was there. When God had given us a vision two years ago, the vision had become very clear to our hearts that we were to minister to these refugees by sending teams over there.

We would be the hands and feet of Jesus. We would be there to minister to them when they came. There needed to be Christians there who would love them. There needed to be a witness of God's grace. The church needed to be there when these people come.

And so, we jumped in and we filled that need there. Even though we can't speak their language, we can love on them. And sometimes we wish that we would have tongues and we could speak their language. And if we could just speak their language, it would be so much more effective.

Love as the Essential Christian Witness

And I think that is true. But in Corinthians 13 it says, though I would speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not love, I will be an astounding grass and a tingling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy or understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains and have not this love of God, I would be as nothing.

And so, we began to understand, especially this summer, that the very most important thing is love. The couple that was there, Hamid and Kinikou, he's Iranian, has been in Greece now for about 12 or 13 years, 14 years maybe, married to a Japanese lady.

Just a lovely couple. They came and spent three months with us there, the time that we were there. And he did the Bible study for the Iranians, the Farsi speaking group. And we worked together a lot. And over and over again, he would say things about that love is very important.

One day he came to us and he said that there's this Iranian couple that just arrived on the island. He said they're new arrivals, but he said the lady's in the hospital. And he said you should go visit them.

He said it's very important that you go visit them. So, we went one day, my wife and I and him and his wife, went to the hospital there, found them in there. And this lady's laying there. She had a cyst or something, had an operation in her stomach.

And she was not well. But we went there and we just simply ministered to them. Maybe 20 minutes or so, and then we left. But he said that that means so much to them. That is so important. And I began to realize that here are so many of these people, they have left their homeland.

They have forsaken everything that they have. Most of them had nice houses and they had nice jobs. They had a nice place to live. They had family around them. But because of the pressure from their government in Iran, they have forsaken all those things and have fled.

And they leave their country. They travel a long distance through Turkey and they come to the shore. And some of them might never have seen a body of water before. And they're supposed to get into this little rubber dinghy boat and they're supposed to cross over.

And they get into that boat and the smugglers are packing the boats out and they're overloading the boats and there's hardly any room for anybody anymore. And they keep putting more people in and then they give someone a couple minutes of training on how to drive the boat and they send them off.

And they wander out into this water and they're aiming for that land over there and they don't know if they're going to make it. And the sea is rough and they're on their way and no one really knows how to drive the boat and they're out there alone in this water.

And they arrive over there on that shore and they're picked up by the police. They're placed under arrest and they're taken into a prison house. And what if there's nobody there to love them? But what if there is somebody there that loves them?

What if the church would be there to welcome them and to love on them? And even if they're sick in the hospital, somebody actually came to see us. Somebody cared so much that they would come to the hospital to see us.

When there are thousands of other people in camp, they could take care of, but they came to see us. That is love to them. And they don't know what to do with it. They don't know that kind of love. A couple of days later, they brought this couple home from the hospital, this man and his wife.

And she still had so much pain, but she so desperately wanted to tell us that she wants to become a Christian, but she had too much pain, so she didn't tell us. And that night, she met the Lord. She came just a day or two later.

She was just all excited. She was just so happy. She had a dream. In her dream, she saw this large body of water and this walkway out along the side there. And she's out there walking along this body of water.

Beautiful steps. Beautiful stones she's walking on. And then in the water there beside her, this water just kind of stands up and a form of a man is there. And it was Jesus. And Jesus looked at her and He says, Do you want to be a Christian?

And she says, Yes! I want to be a Christian. And Jesus says, Come. Come to Me. And she says, But I can't walk on the water. And Jesus said, Yeah, you can walk. Come. You can walk on the water. She steps out there and she walks in the water to go to Jesus.

And then she woke up. She was so excited. He actually wanted me. He received me. He wanted me. And I went to Him. She didn't. She'd never heard the story about Peter walking on the water. She never heard the story about Jesus walking on the water.

We told her that story and she was just so excited. She wanted her husband to believe also. He's a lawyer. He's an analytical thinker. So, he just couldn't believe right away. About a week or two later, she had another dream.

And this dream, if you understand the Muslim background people, if you leave your Muslim religion, you go and become a Christian, that means your family, sometimes they will kill you. Oftentimes, they will kill you.

They will ostracize you. They'll turn you into the authorities. They'll put you in prison. They'll do whatever it takes to do to get rid of the shame that one of the family would turn to Christ. About a week later, she came to us again.

And we had together with a meal one evening. And she said that I had another dream. And she was just so excited. She said, I saw in my dream, I saw my father, my earthly father who had died 20 years before.

And my father was looking at me. And my father said to me, Have you become a Christian? She bowed her head. And she looked up and said, Yes. And her father said, I wish I would have known the Christian way when I lived.

And there she had the affirmation of her. The first dream was the affirmation of her heavenly father. The second dream was the affirmation of her earthly father. Even though he had died. I don't know what all that means, but it meant a lot to them.

Conversion Stories and the Cost of Following Christ

So many opportunities there. What God is doing. So many people. It is a very, very amazing situation if you could somehow picture it. In the Middle East countries, those countries are all, except Israel, they are all very strong Islamic countries.

And the spirit of Islam rules and reigns in those countries. Some of them much more, even stronger than others. You have Afghanistan where they are afraid to mention the Bible or God or anything. You have in Iran, you have a generation of people who have rejected Islam, even though they have to wear their veils and have to go to Mosque to pray and all that.

But they are so sick and tired of Islam, they just want to get away from it. And that's what is happening. And in Syria, they are so sick and tired of the war and the fighting, which is a result of their religion also.

And Iraq the same way. And they don't know peace. One convert told us how he grew up being trained that if somebody hits you, if a little child you're playing with hits you, you have to hit him back harder.

And so they're trained to fight for their lives. And that's all they know. And they really do not know love. He said that one day, one of his friends somehow through Facebook, there was a post, his friend liked the post of someone else on Facebook that then he could see on his Facebook.

And in that post, there was something about that if the Christian way is that if somebody hits you on the one side of the face, you turn the other side of the face and let him hit that one too. And this boy has been raised in a home where there's been a lot of fighting and animosity.

His father is Shia, his mother is a Sunni. And the two families are so against, they are so much full of hatred, so much bitterness that that's all he knows. And he began to search on Facebook and he began to search out the Christian way and what about these people that would actually not strike back when somebody hits you.

And through that, he became a Christian. He was about 14 years old and his family saw a change in him. And they began to ask him if he's Christian. And he stopped going to the mosque to pray. And his uncle who is a militia man, he's a high up military man.

He came one day and was asking him. And yeah, he said he's a Christian. And he said, this is what we're going to do to you. We're going to beat you. And so he sent his nephew, which was this boy's cousin, to come and beat him.

And he beat him and he woke up in the hospital. And when he got back from the hospital, his uncle said, this is just the beginning. He said, this is just a taste of what we're going to do. We're going to kill you.

And so he at about 15 years of age, he left his country and joined the refugee trail. He ends up in the camp. And there he finds Christians, the kind of people that he read about through Christianity.

He's still afraid of his uncle. And when traumatic times came, he would go into trauma and relive some of the beatings he'd been through and would just become suicidal. He wanted to get baptized. He didn't want any refugees there.

He didn't want any pictures taken because he's afraid that if his uncle would find out where he is, if anything would get on the news or anything on media about that, he said his uncle would not stop.

He has lots of money. And he would come and find him and would kill him. It was someone who was baptized that was killed in Athens. A lady we know there, Lorne, who's been working in the camp with us.

She lives in Athens. And she said there was a young man who was baptized. And a picture of that got on social media. And his family found out about it. And they hired someone to kill him. He was killed within her block.

These things are still reality. There was another young man there that was a very dear young man, a Kurdish young man from Iraq. One of his friends gave him the movie called The Passion. And he watched that movie.

And when he was finished, he said that man is not human. There's no human being that can have that kind of love. And he watched that movie over and over again. And he decided he's going to follow this Jesus.

And he joined the refugee trail. Ended up in camp there. Met our people. And began to tell us his story of how he came to Christ when God moves His hands. And in this chapter 11 of Isaiah, if you go down there to the end, to verse 11, verse 10,.

And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign or a banner or a flag of the people. To it shall the Gentiles seek. And his rest shall be glorious. And it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall set His hand again the second time.

God is going to move His hand again to recover the remnant of His people which shall be left from Assyria, Iraq, Egypt, Pathos, Cush, Elam, Shinar, Hamath, and the islands of the sea. He shall set up an ensign for the nations and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.

He's going to take away the envy and animosity between Ephraim and Judah. They shall fly on the shoulders of the Philistines toward the west. Verse 15, The Lord shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea, making a pathway, making a possible highway out of Egypt.

And there shall be a highway for the remnant of His people which shall be left from Assyria, like as it was in Israel, in the day that it came up out of the land of Egypt. There's going to be a highway from Assyria like it was in the days when Israel came out of Egypt.

And He says, When I move My hand, these things happen. When I think of the way Israel came out of Egypt, I think of them, 600 ,000 men plus women and children, and God made a highway for them. God made a way for these people, these hundreds of thousands of people, to move out of Egypt.

There's a highway. And He led them. And He took them out. Now He's saying, a highway from Assyria. I think we're seeing a highway. I believe there's a highway there. God is moving His hand. We've had the Bible studies there with the Iranian people this summer.

Hamid and Kiniku did the Bible study there. When we left, there's about 25 or 30 of them gathering three times a week through the day for a Bible study, to our Bible study. And Hamid is teaching them.

He knows their language. He knows their culture. And it was a real great blessing. I don't know what I would have done without it. But they just left. They're back in Athens now. And so, we don't have a dedicated teacher to take that class on.

The French from Central Africa, earlier this year, a lot of Africans came from many of the north countries in Africa, the northern countries there. I mean, from dozens of different countries. Probably 30 countries or so from Africa represented there.

And many of the French from Congo had come. Congo is an upheaval. And Congo, they say, is like 90 Christian. And so, many of these are Christian people. And what I see happening, and right now in camp, there's probably maybe...

Earlier this summer, there was about 50 or 60 black people in camp. Now, there's not near that many. In the last three months, there's been a high way of Syrians and Iraqis showing up again. And families, lots of children, we had 1 ,100 in August.

And in September, I'm guessing they had more like 2 ,000. And in recent weeks now, they've had as many as 200 per day showing up. The numbers have increased so high. So, there's a lot of families there, a lot of children.

But the French, and I was thinking about the French who were there. They are Christians. They're very lively Christians. And it seems to me like God sent them into the camp to evangelize the camp. They are allowed to evangelize in camp.

And they do. They have a church service in there. They have prayer meeting in camp every morning five days a week at six in the morning from six to seven. Or is it seven to eight for an hour. About 40 men and women gather together every morning.

And there they pray in African fashion. And they'll sing. And someone will preach the Word of God. And they will give it all they've got for an hour, hour and a half. And they'll go back to sleep again.

Camp often doesn't wake up much until around ten o 'clock. Because they're up all night. Especially if it's hot. If it's really hot like this summer, they're not out much during the day. Evenings, five o 'clock, they come out a lot and they're up almost all night.

And some people, they go to bed at five in the morning. But these Africans, they're there praying and they're preaching. And Saturday they don't meet for prayer, but they go evangelizing in camp. And I believe God has sent them there for that purpose.

We went to Athens on my way home. We stopped at Athens. And spent the day there in Victoria Park. Met some of our convert friends there. And the Congolese, the French, they took us up on the mountain there to pray.