I sent out an email a couple of days
ago about the history of Hanukkah as background for the "housecleaning"
or "temple cleansing" that needs to be done with our current mindsets this
season. However, first some more background needs to be laid that is foundational
to understanding the prophetic significance of how the story of Hanukkah
is the story of Israel today. One of the most distorted mindsets that we
have is our belief about who Israel is what is the church. New understanding
is essential if we're to properly interpret the signs of our times and
be prepared for the events of the end of the age.
Let's begin with the question of "Who is Israel?".
There are two books by Angus and Batya Wooten that I am going to give the
references to at the bottom of this email. I highly recommend everyone
order and read them. These books do a very thorough job of documenting
the truth about Israel and the restoring of her Kingdom. I can not
begin to make the case that these books do for Israel in an email.
I can only give you a brief synopsis of what I believe is the truth and
a different perspective than that which is held by most of those in the
current Christian church system.
When most people think of Israel they think of
a tiny piece of geography in the Middle East populated by "Jews."
This is only the most concrete observable level. In fact, Israel
is much more than that both in terms of geography and population. Remember
that the Lord looks at things from multiple perspectives and His concept
of Israel is much more complex.
Let me tell you a "fairytale" or a "parable" that
is more fact than fiction although I am going to take a little poetic license.
There once were two young sisters named Judah
and Ephraim. Together they constituted the house of Israel. Both sisters
were betrothed to a great king. While waiting for their beloved to come
and take them to the formal wedding they got lost in the desert.
Life in the desert was hard and the two couldn't get along. They fought
among themselves and separated into two houses. Weakened by division
both eventually were carried off by evil kings. They were raped and forced
into servitude.
Ephraim was abducted by the king of Assyria and
was passed around among the nations. She must have lost her mind because
not only did she forget about her bridegroom but she forgot who she was
also. Even though she carried the birthright of the firstborn in the house
of Israel and was destined to be a great queen she became a beggar. She
sold herself to false religions to preserve herself and she slipped deeper
and deeper into a walking coma. She was sort of a Sleeping Beauty zombie.
In the meantime, however, she had many, many children and they had children
and pretty soon the nations were so intermingled with her bloodline that
it became difficult to tell which were "gentile" and which were Israel.
The king of Babylon carried off Judah and although
she did not forget who she was and her heritage, she did forget about her
bridegroom. She committed adultery with Babylon - power, politics and religion
- for protection and provision. When her bridegroom came to rescue her
she didn't recognize him and even helped beat him and send him away.
Rejected, the bridegroom left but sent his servants
to the gentile nations to search for his beloved Ephraim. Ephraim was still
in a deep sleep but began to wake up as she heard the messengers calling
for her and as she began to eat from the tree of life and drink the living
waters. Her sister Judah was also beginning to wake up as she began to
realize she had missed her bridegroom. In addition, to share in the
joy of the news of their salvation, others - true gentiles without blood
lineage- were also being invited to join the house of Israel as full sons
and daughters. Freedom was being declared for ALL prisoners. The House
of Israel was on its way to being reunited, enlarged and restored to her
destiny.
Enter the evil queen of Babylon - the black widow.
The evil queen was jealous of Israel. She had been rejected by Israel's
King and bridegroom and hated him. She had tried to kill him but failed.
She knew the best way to hurt him now was to hurt his beloved Israel. Babylon,
like a big black widow spider, moved into the house of Israel and began
injecting her with poison. Both sisters fell back asleep like Snow White,
as they were fed the poisoned apple from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good
and Evil.
The queen drove Ephraim and Judah apart again.
She turned Ephraim against Judah spinning lies about how Judah was responsible
for sending away her beloved. Buying into the lie Ephraim began to persecute
Judah and separated herself from her family and heritage. Believing that
her "step-mother" was caring for her and protecting her, Ephraim
began to turn over her possessions, her home and her identity to Babylon.
Babylon moved in and made herself queen of the
manor. Soon she was hatching her own eggs and raising up poisonous stepdaughters
and stepsons who helped their mother plunder Ephraim's inheritance. Still
hoping to possess the true King's kingdom Babylon dressed her daughters
up with the hope of deceiving him into accepting her own counterfeit as
his bride. She also enslaved Ephraim's adopted sisters from the gentile
nations so that they would not steal her hope of fooling the King. Soon
Ephraim (including her adopted gentile siblings) had become a sad Cinderella,
the servant of the evil stepmother and her stepsisters, a slave in her
own house. She had never fully recovered the memory of who she was and
where she had come from and now it was completely lost. However, she could
vaguely remember stories of the bridegroom and she continued to hold onto
the hope that some day her prince would come for her.
Judah, in the meantime, became bitter and prideful
and something of an old maid. She forgot her own sin and became angry at
the bridegroom that she now refused to recognize. She closed herself off
to protect herself from the outside persecution and she placed herself
into a self-imposed prison of defensive unbelief. She became a "liberated
woman" of sorts. She didn't need a Messiah to rescue her. She could and
would take care of herself. She would rather die than trust her heart again.
Well, this would be a sad story with no happy
ending if it weren't for the love of the bridegroom. The story is not yet
complete but the ending goes something like this: The bridegroom will once
again send his servants to both Ephraim (including her adopted gentile
sisters) and to Judah to wake them up and prepare them for the return of
the bridegroom. This time they will wake up and realize that they have
been lied to and plundered. Ephraim will see that she has been replaced
by a counterfeit and will leave the house that Babylon built. She will
rise up, recognize her birthright and heritage and take back her inheritance.
All that was stolen will be returned when she takes her case before the
righteous judge that knows the story from beginning to end and who is just
waiting for Israel to plead her case before him. She will go to her sister
Judah and ask for forgiveness and their relationship will be restored.
Judah will recognize her need for her sister and Ephraim will regain the
memories of her heritage from Judah. Judah will also realize that she too
longs for and needs a knight in shinning armor to save her.
Reunited, stronger than ever before after having
been tried through the fires, the two houses will unite with the engrafted
adopted brothers and sisters. The children of both houses combined will
be so numerous that they will cover the earth. Set free at last from the
whirlwinds, their new house, like Dorothy's house from Oz, will fall on
the house of the evil queen. There won't be anything left of her and her
counterfeit children. She will not only be merely dead, she will be really
most sincerely dead. In fact, the smoke of her burning will go up forever
and ever.
The real happily ever after part of the story
is that the bridegroom will come once again for his beloved Israel and
will establish her as the queen of His Kingdom that she was destined to
be. There will be a great wedding and a great feast. All the evil queen's
horses and all the queen's men will become the main course. It will be
a Bar-B-Q that will make Texas jealous. Bar-B-Qued roast beast.
Of course, this is not the end of this story,
only the beginning, but it's as far as we can go for right now. In the
next email we'll look at the interpretation of this parable.
Highly recommended reading: Who is Israel?
By Batya Wootten and Restoring Israel's Kingdom by Angus Wooten. Published
by Key of David Publishing, Saint Cloud, FL; Distributed by House of David,
PO Box 700217, Saint Cloud, FL 34770 http://www.mim.net
