HOLY LAND! IS THERE SUCH A THING?

Yeshua, Son of God and Son of Adam was conceived in the Holy Land. He was born in the Holy Land. Yeshua lived in the Holy Land. Yeshua was taught in the Holy Land. Yeshua was bar- mitzvahed in the Holy Land. Yeshua was baptized in the Holy Land, was driven to the wilderness in the Holy Land, and He mastered His adversary in the Holy Land.

Yeshua walked the Holy Land, heralded God’s Word in the Holy Land, performed His messianic ministry in the Holy Land, discipled His talmidim in the Holy Land, and healed, helped, and did miracles in the Holy Land. Yeshua wept and was betrayed, beaten, pierced, lashed, and crucified in the Holy Land. Yeshua died, He was buried, and He resurrected in the Holy Land; He ascended back to heaven from the Holy Land just as the angels had ascended from Yisrael to heaven on the ladder of Yaaqov’s dream. Yeshua’s ghost blew into the upper room in Yerushalayim in the Holy Land and baptized His followers. The Gospel went out to all the nations of the earth from the Holy Land after first being heralded in Yerushalayim, Yehudea, and Shomeron in the Holy Land.

Holy Land! Is there such a thing? The nevi (prophet) Zechariah prophesied of a Holy Land in the earth that is the inheritance of Yeshua (Zechariah 2:12). The nevi Isaiah spoke of the Holy City in the Holy Land (Isaiah 52:1). The nevi Ezekiel spoke of the Holy Sanctuary in the Holy City in the Holy Land (Ezekiel 23:38), and the nevi Haggai speaks of the Holy One who is coming to the Holy Sanctuary in the Holy City in the Holy Land (Haggai 2:3). The Holy Bible prophesies that He is coming, confirms that He came, and reveals that He is coming again. Where is He coming? To the Holy Land!

For now, Holy God is dwelling in another place. The Holy One, Yeshua now resides within the Kodesh Kodeshim or the Holy of Holies of His People, the Church, His kehilat or synagogue, that is, His congregation. In the near future the Holy One and Jewish Messiah, Yeshua is predestined to return, first, in the clouds, the same way He ascended to heaven in Acts 2, to seize His bride in the Rapture. Second, He is then coming in bodily form with His assembly/church to His vineyard, His garden, His backyard, the Holy Land. Yeshua is coming as theSecond Adam. He will physically and bodily reign upon the Davidic throne in His Messianic Kingdom over all the earth for one- thousand years, ruling over all the nations of the earth as the firstAdam should have done. The Holy Scriptures predict that ten Gentiles will grab the garment of a Jew and will say, “let us go up with you for we have heard that God is with you;” and they will come to see the Lord in His Holy Land (Zechariah 8:23).

Finally, the eternal state will be a Holy Land called theNew Yerushalayim, a Holy City coming down out of heaven prepared as a bride for her husband (Revelation 21). Eden and theNew Yerushalayim are bookends of the Bible, at the beginning and end of the holy scrolls, in Genesis and Revelation. Eden and theNew Yerushalayim are the Holy Land where God once dwelled and will dwell again with man.

Our “going up” or aliya to the Holy Land is a study and a dress rehearsal for what lies ahead for us as believers. Going to Israel is a God-given opportunity. If you love Yeshua/Jesus and long to know Him better you will definitely benefit from a visit to His Holy Land. Yeshua is at the borders. He is at the four seas.Yeshua is in the Judean wilderness. He is in the myriad mountains of Israel’s backbone. Yeshua is in the valleys. He is in the myriad biblical cities. Yeshua is at the Jordan, in the Shepherds Field, at Jacob’s Well, at Cana, Nazareth, Magdala, the Mount of Beatitudes, all the other places you will visit, and especially inYerushalayim. Every place has a message for you from and aboutYeshua.

The Holy Land is the 5th Gospel! There is no other land on earth YHWH God calls, “My land.” The prophets called the land, “His land.” You are invited to come and see the Lord in His Holy Land.

Order your copy of DISCOVERING THE HOLY LAND

THE DARK NIGHT OF THE NATIVITY

What happens when Messiah is born in you?  David Jeremiah wrote in his book, When Your World Falls Apart, “the spiritual masters have told us but we have not heard, that we live in a skin-deep world where the world glorifies cloths, fashions, makeup, tummy tucks, facials, nose jobs, climbing the ladder, but that Godly character and substance are shaped in the “dark nights,”in the Gethsemanes, in the deserts -at Christmas…Show me someone who lives a carefree life with no problems or trials or dark nights of the soul and I’ll show you a shallow person.”

Charles Spurgeon wrote, 

“I bear willing witness that I owe more to the fire, and the hammer, and the file, than to anything else in my Lord’s workshop. I sometimes question whether I have ever learned anything except through the rod. When my schoolroom is darkened, I see most.”

God always intends the dark nights in our lives to have a purpose! Y’sraelin bondage to Egypt, Y’sraelin captivity to Babylon, Y’sraelunder Persian and then Roman rule all had a purpose in God’s design. Miriam and Yosephbeing judged, ostracized, neurotic, uncomfortable and in pain, far from home, and alone was for a [grand] purpose. The shepherds being frightened, Rachel’s children being murdered, and the parents deposed of their babies dressed in blue all were in the profound and majestic messianic purpose of the Almighty God although a very mysterious plan. Years later when Yeshuawould be betrayed, forsaken, sold, beaten, crucified, and placed on a cross, these things also would be purposed by God for a grand, colossal theme.

Shaul’s(Paul’s) thorn in the flesh, Yochanon’sincarceration on Patmos, Kepha(Peter) being crucified upside down, John Hus opposing Catholicism then burned at the stake, all had an eternal purpose. The Holocaustfrom 1939-1945, and every disruptive moment that comes into our lives, whether a nation or an individual has HIS great purpose! God intends that the dark nights for all who have lost husbands, wives, children, parents, loved ones, or their health to be for His good (Romans 8:28)! 

We celebrate HaMolad, the Nativity which initiated the Gospel or “Good News,”although it was the most sinister and dark moment in God’s and Y’srael’shistory, and in the history of the world! We will have dark nights! Just when we have everything arranged like we want it, just when all looks well, we are caught up, we have planned to retire, to spend time seeing the world, to grow old together, the disaster hits. We get bad news, a bad report, a bad word, a jolt, some unwelcome and unanticipated news and tribulation. Then, we ask, “why?”David Jeremiah when facing cancer wrote, “at that darkest and most dismal or hours, there may be no silence deeper than the silence of a hospital corridor…the nights were worse, they were long and dark and lonely.”

Jeremiah writes that enemies will always be at the gate. The devil is our enemy. The world is our enemy. Our old nature is our enemy. Age is our enemy. Disease is our enemy. Fear is our enemy. A friend can betray you. A spouse may be unfaithful. A son or daughter may desert you. A brother or sister may prove to be uncaring. A parent may disown you. We receive terrifying news. Yet, this we know. God allows trials and suffering and does so tomake us better, to strengthen us, to help us, to make us more like Him , which should be our greatest desire! 

Christmas must not be a once-a-year event, a festive celebration that leaves us with anti-climatic depression. HaMolad is the promised hope for us amid a holocaust around us that YHWHshuaGod is with us, for us, and in us. Don’t let Christmas be a day or a gift in a box. Let Christmas be your reality.

THE HOLY SEED ALWAYS IN JEOPARDY

THE HOLY SEED IS ALWAYS IN JEOPARDY!

by Reginald (Reggie) Lisemby

The spiritual battle that God proclaimed in Genesis 3 (Holy War is biblical and YHWH proclaimed it, not satan) is a legal one. God is bound to His spiritual laws for by them He exists and by His spiritual laws heaven and earth, all creation functions. God cannot bully His way through eternity because He is God. When Adam lost his God-image and his position as God’s Viceroy over the realm of earth that was given to him by God, God could not take it back by brute force just because God is God. God must win back the realm of heaven and earth and His monarch, Adam legally!  Two-thousand years ago, Yoseph and Miriam had to obey God and “run for their lives”down to Egypt from BeitLechem since Herod was coming. Herod came and he murdered all the babies in the city of David. The seed was in jeopardy.

When the Apostle Shaul/Paul wrote to warn believers of demons, powers of darkness, principalities in hierarchy [places] he was in essence saying that spiritual beings, spiritual battle, human life and death operate by spiritual rules and laws. Be warned! Therefore, “put on the armor to stand…having done all to stand.”Satan is a roaring lion that does devour, and he is not toothless; he can hurt us. Thankfully, Yoseph listened and obeyed the angel in his dream and “got out of town”quickly. What is God telling you to do?

The “seed of woman”was promised at the beginning in Genesis 3 as God’s declaration of war, spiritual war on the serpent, the devil. Genesis 3:15 is the “Mother Prophecy”of all biblical prophecies; the verse is termed in Latin, protoevangelium meaning“first gospel.”Following that first prophecy not only did the patriarchs begin “looking”for the coming of “the Seed,”but all spiritual beings in the atmosphere began to investigate the terms of God’s war and His prescription of the coming champion. 

When Cain murdered Abel, the messianic seed was in jeopardy. Yet, God gave Seth. When Satan immediately began to devise a program to clone human DNA and to intermarry and amalgamate with human women (for by woman the seed is coming) the messianic seed who must be pure human was in jeopardy. Yet, God saved Noach and his family. When Sarah was taken by Abimelech into his harem, the Seed was in jeopardy. But God cursed Abimelech’s house. When God was considering destroying the entire nation of Israel and the seed of woman was in jeopardy, Moshein the spirit of Yeshua moved upon God as mediator, and said “kill me instead!”

Two-thousand years ago, in the shadows of the dark, dank, cavity in the earth, the place where Yeshua was born, in the presence of Yoseph, Miriam, the cattle, sheep, and other things present, though unseen, the destroyer was there; he was there to kill the Seed of Woman the moment He was born (Revelation 12). The recourse God had -since Yeshua was now a man- was to move upon Yoseph to escape the Seed and his human parents out from the grasp of Herod.

Why didn’t God simply give Herod cancer, a heart attack, a stoke, or a camel-wreck and have the wretch fall off the precipice of a cliff? God does not always protect us from bullies, from diseases, from spiritual powers. We must listen very attentively to Him and obey Him. The seed of woman had been in jeopardy since Genesis 3, throughout the generations of the stories of the Holy Scriptures, and then especially what we call today, Christmas night. Yes, it was Lailah Kadosh or a holy night, but it was also a Lailah Choshech, a night of darkness!

Beloved, did you know that you were also promised?  Believers in Yeshua are like Yeshua;we were foreknown, predestined, determined, known in the embryo, chosen in the birth-canal, and convicted and drawn to Yeshuain life. Thus, like Yeshua our spiritual brother, we constitute the “holy seed.” Satan is not omniscient, he does not know everything, but he knows God’s design, and he recognizes (sometimes) God’s holy seed!