Bro. John:
I have read your message on “The Earth” several times now, and I marvel at the wisdom as I read what God is showing to us. How many people in the world today do you think have such insight into what is really happening? How many realize that there is a great Creator who has total control over hearts and all events that are occurring this very minute? Yet, He has chosen to open up our eyes to His truth. Keep us humble, Lord.
I never really understood completely why God loves Israel so, except that they were His first chosen people. But to understand now through that verse in Isaiah 66 that, as you said, “what has prevented the “peoples, and multitudes, and nations” of this world from destroying Israel is the influence of God’s New Testament saints on the world, with their prayers and their love for Israel,” and that Israel is the nation “through whom the Savior came” puts in my heart the same feelings God has for His Son and for Israel. God must want us who were “born in one step”, to understand the importance of Israel in our lives and the importance of the saints’ prayers for Israel. And, as always, the importance of His precious Son. Because of Israel’s rejection of God’s Son, and God being a jealous God, we became the recipient of such love. And it makes us love Israel more, knowing that they do not yet know their Savior — but that one day they will. It makes that verse in Zechariah 3:6 so special: “And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.”
Reading what you wrote here: “The False Prophet, the servant of Satan and the Beast, was the kind of soil that, at first, bore great fruit, but then, near the harvest, it all turned bitter. May God help us to be the kind of earth that, with patience and understanding, bears good fruit until the end”, reminds me of a verse in Zephaniah 3:16:
“In that day, it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear thou not: and to Zion, Let not thine hands be slack.”
I pray that our hands and hearts do not become slack in the things of God, and that we recognize when He reveals to us His wisdom. God is so big, Bro. John, I’m sure at times I miss some of Him. It takes being still and spending time with Him so we can take in His feelings. The importance of what God sends is not just for our understanding, but so that our hands will not be slack in passing it on, and as you wrote, “bears good fruit until the end.”
There are a lot of sobering feelings in what you wrote in “The Earth”. God has revealed something tender and something terrifying. I was not able to take it all in Wednesday night. But He took time to show it to you so that you might show it to us. I want to take time to hear Him and feel His feelings.
Thank you.
Sandy