Video Transcription
The wild prophet Jeremiah, as Israel was going into captivity in Babylon, wrote an important prophecy that would materialize thousands of years later, on the hills of Samaria. He foresaw a day when the watchman would show up. In Jeremiah 31 he speaks about, “Again you will plant vineyards on the hills of Samaria the farmers will plant them and enjoy their fruit there will be a day when the watchmen cry out on the hills of Ephraim and say unto you ‘O’ Israel, Let us go up to the Lord our God’.”
Can you try to picture what Jeremiah must have been thinking from his cell where he was imprisoned? How can it be that these Babylonian, gentile invaders are coming to literally take our lives into captivity? How is it that there’s going to be a day when gentiles arrive and actually, are not just standing with us, but they’re leading us spiritually? So this must have been a profound moment for him. What is the word watchmen there? It’s only used one time in all of the Old Testament and it is the word in Hebrew called nats-reem. It literally means the gentile branch. So we make no mistake to understand that the gentiles would show up in Israel’s modern history on the hills of Samaria and they would speak into the spiritual future of the nation. “Come let us go up together to the Lord our God!” There would be an awakening among the gentiles somehow, inside this generation.
I believe God is choosing this generation to address His attitude about the Jews, to those who are literally seeing the unfolding of the prophecies with their own eyes. That is that we’re getting to see Israel come into full blossom and we’re getting to play that role as observers and protectors of this nation.
It’s an exciting time inside of Israel today if you can imagine that God when he gives identity, he releases it to you in such a way that it’s personal. So to be a stranger to him is to really be a stranger to yourself. In the founding of modern Israel today it was really came about through secular leaders on a secular premise. But today there’s been a shift a cultural change inside the nation that I believe warrants an international prayer movement, where the gentiles come up onto the walls of Jerusalem, they stand on the hills of Samaria today, they stand from their own nations, and they pray into the restoration of spiritual identity into the nation of Israel. God foresaw that it would take place. He would take out the heart of stone and give Israel a heart of flesh He would put a new spirit inside of them. One of the most profound things happening inside the nation today practically, is that Israel’s ministry of education has made a national decision to bring the bible back into the schools, not as history, but as a spiritual process that the students go through in understanding their identity as it relates to their history. If you lose your story, you lose your identity. If you know your story, you gain your identity.
This is what’s happening across the nation today on the military intelligence side of things, from the government levels to the civic levels, there is a restoration of spiritual identity going on inside this nation. I believe one of the greatest things that we can do is we’re now inside the journey of this fast is to lift up and pray into the breakthroughs that need to occur over Israel’s spiritual national life. And that there would be a recovery of this identity in every single home. I’m looking forward to these next few weeks with you and praying into this very diligently; understanding who we are today as watchmen, standing literally on the hills of Samaria, or standing in our nation and calling forth Israel’s spiritual future.
