The Jerusalem Prayer List – February 19th, 2009

by Joseph Shulam

It rains every day in the afternoon in Curitiba, Brazil.  Everything is green in Brazil because of this almost daily rain.  I am thinking of the Sea of Galilee now.  It is some six meters below the RED line and in fact it is in danger of turning over.  When a lake like the Sea of Galilee turns over the salty and brackish water that is at the bottom of the lake turns over and comes to the top and pollutes the whole lake.  The reason that this can happen is because there has been so little rain in Israel and the meteorologists say that this winter is one of the driest winters since records have been kept in Israel.  In any other land this would be a cause for deep concern.  In the land of Israel it ought to be a cause for alarm.  Jewish people pray every morning the words from Deuteronomy: “It shall come about, if you listen obediently to my commandments which I am commanding you today, to love the LORD your God and to serve Him with all your heart and all your soul, that He will give the rain for your land in its season, the early and late rain, that you may gather in your grain and your new wine and your oil. “He will give grass in your fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied. “Beware that your hearts are not deceived, and that you do not turn away and serve other gods and worship them. “Or the anger of the LORD will be kindled against you, and He will shut up the heavens so that there will be no rain and the ground will not yield its fruit; and you will perish quickly from the good land which the LORD is giving you.”  (Deut. 11:13-17)  It is because of this text that I am alarmed that this year is such a dry year in the Land of Israel.  The dryness of the land is actually an indicator a litmus paper for the spiritual state that the people of Israel find themselves.  The dryness is a sign that we don't listen to the Lord in obedience and we don't really love Him with all our hearts and with all our souls.  Let it be known to all that in no way am I condemning the people of Israel and the Jewish people for anything.  I am only pointing out one possible explanation from God's Word that can shed some light on the reasons for this horrid drouth in our land.  Whatever the reason that God is not pouring the rain on the land of Israel this year as followers of God we ought to pray for a reversal of the decree in heaven and for rain of blessings to be fill the Sea of Galilee and water the Land of Israel. 

Today Elhanan and I have arrived in the city of Belo-Horizonte.  We were received royally by Marcelo and Matheus and Tatiane and Tom and now we are in the hotel preparing for this evening.  The international seminar will start on Sunday, but many people are arriving from today already.  There are already over 300 people from around the world registered and we expect another 300 local people.  We have people coming from Portugal, Slovenia, United States, Chile, Argentina, Costa-Rica, Venezuela, Panama, Peru, and Israel to participate in this conference.  The topic of the conference is “Yeshua and the Torah.”  For me it is interesting that in Israel there are those who call themselves “Messianic Jews” and they are condemning the study of the Torah and of the relevant Jewish material for the understanding of the New Testament in the context of the First Century in the Land of Israel.  In the World the Holy Spirit is awakening people all around the World and truly animating them to love God's Word from Genesis to Revelation and to understand the New Testament from it's Jewish background. 

It seems to me that no matter what we do in Israel as Jewish Disciples of Yeshua in relationship to our heritage and for the purpose of expressing the Biblical truths in a contextualized Jewish way there still lingers the old spirit of the Spanish Inquisition and the poltergaist of Torkemada among some of the Protestant missionary types in our land.  This I share with you as a matter of prayer because it is important to God for the Body of the Messiah in the Land of Israel to be loving and kind and united and cooperating with each other for the sake of the much bigger trask of bringing Yeshua home to His nation.  I see the hunger and thirst for God's Word all around the World and I see Christians from all backgrounds seeking to understand better the New Testament and the teachings of Yeshua, but I see little of the same among those “Messianic Jews” in Israel who continue such a negative and mean attitude toward their Jewish brothers and sisters who express their faith in Jewish First Century terms and regect the language and the dogma of the European Christianity.  Please pray for the unity and the good Spirit of God to restore relationships and cooperation between the brothers in the land of Israel.

In Brazil I see such progress among the brothers and sisters who are committed to the Restoration of the New Testament faith.  Here too there were and still are different opinions and approaches, but there is also a willingness to reconcile and restore relationships and that is the right attitude and the good Spirit that we ought to have in Israel.  I am not writing to you these paragraphs in order to aggrandize myself or imply that I am o.k. or that Netivyah is o.k. in this situation and others are not – no we are all not totally right.  I am writing to you because I believe that your prayers are going to knock on Heaven's door and make a difference that will help the unity and the cooperation and the fraternity of the brothers in the Land of Israel.  You need to pray for me personally and for the whole Body of the Messiah in Israel because all of us have things that we need to change and repent and restore and rebuild relationships and only with God's help can this really happen.

Writing the above paragraphs about Israel ought to also remind our brothers and sisters from among the Gentiles that they too need to seek unity and cooperation with those who are condemning them and criticizing them.  The division and enmity between Christians from similar faith is not a natural thing and it is something that needs to be worked out and fixed because God might not be happy with any of us if we don't strive to restore the unity of our faith and the bond of peace.  We are a divided army now and the enemy is knocking on our door with the Koran in one hand and the Buddhism and secularism on the other hand. 

In Jerusalem the congregation is doing great under the leadership of David and the other man.  There are the spring holidays coming up and Bar and Bat Mitzvah's coming up in March and also a very significant seminar with brothers from Japan and from Israel dealing with the issues of Jewish identity and the deity of the Messiah.  This seminar will be in the beginning of March a day after I land in Israel from Brazil and it will be held in the Negev Desert.  I ask you to pray for this seminar because these are the burning issues of the Body of Jewish Disciples of Yeshua all around the World.  If we can get it together and come up with a good teachings and publish them in a booklet I believe that it would be a blessing for many people around the whole World.

I need to start raising funds for the Portugese project.  I have written to you earlier of my desire to make an international conference for the reclamation of the Lost Jews of Portugal back into the Jewish Fold, but without doing to them what the Catholic church did to them in the Inquisition, without forcing them to re-convert to Judaism.  They are Jews.  They did not intermarry.  They only married other Marranos (Christianos Nuevos) and they kept their Jewish faith in secret all these hundreds of years.  It is true that on the outside they were Catholic in order to save their lives, but it is also true that at home in secret they remained Jews.  The Jewish establishment and the State of Israel must not force them to convert to Orthodox Judaism that will essentially force the same as the Inquisition to change their ways and fit into the Orthodox Jewish Ashkenazi mold.  Each has to be given the freedom to express his or her Judaism in the best way that they know and if they want to learn more resources can be make available to them.  My next step for this project will be the establishment of a international board of directors and the beginning of the organization of the international conference in Portugal for 2010.  Please lift up this project and pray for a smooth sailing with many new doors opening to make this possible and restore those hidden Jews from Portogal back to the bossom of the Jewish Nation.

I have prayed and anointed with oil several people in Brazil and with some immediate positive results were seen.  Please pray for Paulo, and for a dear sister from Curitiba who has some serious problems with cancer.  Please pray for Miriam who is scheduled to have cataract surgery in Jerusalem.  Continue to pray for Ruby, and the total healing and strength of Danah our daughter.  Danah has gone back to work although the doctor told here that it would take at least several more weeks for her recovery.  In Jerusalem we continue to pray for Ahuva, Lea, Ilana, Zvi and Sara, and Sarit.

I ask you to pray for all those many people who are unemployed and looking for work.  This is true now all around the world.  We have many brothers and sisters who are having a hard time just keeping bread on their table.  Even while traveling I get e-mails and phone calls from people in Jerusalem who want to receive food from the Soup-Kitchen.  Yuda has done a marvelous job with cutting costs in the Soup-Kitchen, but the numbers are going up and it is really hard to see an old man cry and say that his refrigerator is empty and that if we cut him off the program he does not know where to find food.  We need your prayers for the humanitarian work that Netivyah is doing.  The requests for help are not stopping they are increasing.  I have just finished teaching a series of lectures on “The Days of Elijah” and in that story the widow woman from Tsarfata in Tyra gave Elijah the prophet the last piece of bread that she had made for herself and her son, and that brought such a blessing to this gentile widow woman that her bowl of floor did not end and her pot of oil did not dry for all the three and a half years that there was no rain in the land.  This is what the Lord says: “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”  (Matt. 6:33)

There is a new “Teaching from Zion” out.  In fact it is being mailed as I write to you this prayer list.  The subject this time is “progress.”  The idea is that our path of salvation is very much an issue of progress and process a continuum and not a momentary expression from our lips.  I strongly suggest that you register on our web page and receive this magazine that has been going out of Netivyah for more than 30 years.  Right now we are sending it for free as we have for 30 years.  We depend on your prayers and financial contributions in order to be able to send this magazine from Israel around the whole world.  Enjoy it!  (www.netivyah.org)

Thank you so much for your partnership in the Lord's work in Israel and thank you so very much for your prayers and contributions.  There are very few ministries like Netivyah in the world and we appreciate so much your support.  Please stay connected!

Joseph Shulam

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