Video Transcription

Hi everyone. This is Patricia Bootsma

I want to start today with a story. I was a child growing up in Canada on a farm and I was 5, 6, 7, 8 years old. And I wanted to pray, and I did pray, for the Jewish people almost every day.  In one sense, I wasn’t even born again until I was 12, but I remember hearing the stories of my parents who grew up in the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation in that land. My dad was 15 when the war ended and I remember the stories of how they would say that the Jewish children would disappear from their classroom one by one, or the Jewish shops would be shut down. And other stories, including in my mom’s household, that my grandmother would house Jewish people, as well as really anyone that needed food. They lived near the town of Rotterdam, which had a lot of bombings and there was deportations that were going on into the camps. And my mom would wake up in the morning with children in the bed with her and sometimes there would be Jewish children that they were helping as they would go on to other safe houses.  

I just remember being gripped by these stories. And obviously having a God heart for the Jewish people, not even ever meeting a Jewish person, growing up on a farm.  [and] Then later in my life, you know, studying the scriptures and just realizing that God had an eternal covenant, through the Abrahamic covenant, about the Jewish people, for the Jewish people. And I began to study the word and understand more and then go to Israel. You know, for 14 years I’ve led tours of Israel with my husband. But all I want to say is that something is happening in this day in this hour of the connecting of the dots. Even in my own life, that is the Lord saying that, “Now is the time to raise up Anna’s.” Anna’s that, in the temple, would minister to the Lord, to come along with the Simeons, who would look for and recognize the day the hour of the visitation of the Lord. And there’s such a connection, and you know it that Matthew 23, where it says where Yeshua Jesus says that he is not coming again until the Jewish people, indeed the leaders of Israel would say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” and so you and I the gentile church, we have a vested interest, that there is something that God is calling us to pray as one new man for the Jewish people. There’s so much prophetic swirlings in this time, in this day, in this hour. That the lord is saying, “Now is the time to cry out, to pray. Now is the time to really care.” anti-Semitism is increasing all over the earth. [and] I just remember the stories in the Netherlands and in Germany when the churches on a Sunday would meet and how sometimes they were near the railway tracks, where the cattle cars loaded with the Jewish prisoners about to go to Auschwitz or other camps. And sometimes what would happen, the pastors would say, “everybody sing louder now sing louder,” to drown out the cry of these one’s going to almost certain death. And I feel compelled to say, where are the tears of the gentile church? As Paul said in romans 9:1 about that he had, “anguish of heart” and “great travail,” that his people would come to know the saving knowledge of the Lord. That they would know Him and I feel lately, there’s something coming on my life and I just want to invite everyone into this fast, into this prayer call. That we would cry out with a unified call to say, “I will be one that would shed tears. I will be one that would be a watchman on the wall. I would be one like the Dietrich Bonhoeffers and the Corey ten Booms, that I would care and I would pray, and I would know the word enough to stand in the truth of what the Lord says. You know as Corey ten Boom’s dad, who was given an opportunity to go back home, if he would just renounce you know helping the Jews. And he said, “I will go to prison because if another Jewish person knocked on my door I would surely help them.” 

And so there’s something coming on planet earth that we don’t exactly even see the full measure of it, but I want to call us, the gentile church, to cry, to pray, to care, to seek the lord as it pertains to His firstborn Israel. That they would know Him so in this fast I just honor Lou as a modern day Simeon. I believe there’s a call now for the Annas to come along and look to come along with the Simeons, and pray and cry out before the Lord. I just want to invite you into this. I thank you God for everyone watching and I thank you for wind at your back in this fast, that we are strengthened in this, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the one who cares so very deeply for his firstborn. Amen and Amen. God bless you.