July 31, 2006
“The set time to favor Zion has come”The Lord is with us. This is what we have experienced in several ways and occasions, and we thank Him for it. And we thank you for the wonderful part you have played in this through your prayers, love and – for those of you who have helped us – through your gracious gifts.
(Psalm 102:13)
Last month, I spent two weeks in beautiful Switzerland, speaking at 13 meetings in the German-speaking part of the country. The venues were arranged by Pro Israel. Every night the Lord helped me to speak in German, and to bring a very serious message to Swiss believers concerning the future of their country, and the West, if we continue to go against God’s plan with His people Israel.
In the Swiss capital, Bern, I reminded the pro-Israel Christians who had come to the meeting that their country had served, in a way, as the birthplace of the new young State of Israel. It is well known that England helped make it possible for the Jewish people to establish a national home by issuing the famous 1917 Balfour Declaration. But it was 20 years earlier, after the first official Zionist Congress in 1897, that Theodore Herzl wrote in his diary: “In Basel [Switzerland] I founded the Jewish State.”
I reminded my audience of this fact, which I believe the Lord has also recorded, and as a result of which He has shown favor to the nation of Switzerland. But I made it clear that now, as never before, that country stands at a crossroads which could see it lose all the credit for this, and not only because it had refused refuge to fleeing Jews while welcoming Nazis deposits of stolen Jewish treasures in Swiss banks. Switzerland today, by choosing to follow the European course which persists in its unjustifiable criticism and condemnation of Israel, would forfeit all its remaining credit with the Lord. To prevent this, Swiss believers need to make a very strong stand for the Jewish people at this critical moment in history.
May God use all the messages I preached in His Name, and based on His Word, to stir the believers in Switzerland to stand up and be counted at this late hour!
I came back to Israel on July 10, which means I have been here to closely observe the tremendous developments during the last two and a half weeks. I believe we are only at the very beginning of something that may become much more serious.
As I wrote in a previous email, God’s Spirit has alerted believers in different parts of the world to pray the words of Psalm 83 into this situation.
This means that we need to uphold Israel and the Israel Defense Forces for their full victory over all the country’s evil-minded enemies. It will take nothing less – not a premature ceasefire and not negotiations; only a complete victory will lead to a New Middle East where God can bring the revival and blessing which He has promised through His prophet Isaiah:
In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian will come into Egypt and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians will serve with the Assyrians. In that day Israel will be one of three with Egypt and Assyria--a blessing in the midst of the land, whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, "Blessed is Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance." (Isaiah 19:23-25)
Is it not yet a very little while till Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be esteemed as a forest? In that day the deaf shall hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness. The humble also shall increase their joy in the Lord, and the poor among men shall rejoice In the Holy One of Israel. For the terrible one is brought to nothing, the scornful one is consumed, and all who watch for iniquity are cut off. (Isaiah 29:17-20)
Lebanon, as promised here, will become a fruitful field and the terrorists who have inflicted such devastation upon that country “will be brought to naught” – annihilated.
This is where things are heading today inside Lebanon, and we must pray, also for the sake of God’s wonderful purpose expressed in the scriptures, for a complete and full victory by the IDF over all terrorism in the Land of the Cedars. This prayer may also involve a further war with Syria, one in which Damascus and its evil regime, which for years has supported and given refuge to all kinds of terrorist groups – terrorizing Lebanon and murdering its leaders – will be dealt the blow described by the same prophet in chapter 17: “…and Damascus will be a ruinous heap…” but also: “…‘and the remnant of Syria will be as the glory of the children of Israel,’ says the Lord of hosts.” (Isaiah 17:1, 3).
However terrible the consequences could be of the war that may now erupt, the end will see the Middle East enter into a period of tremendous blessing and revival, the sight that Isaiah describes above (Isaiah 19:23-25).
This is what is set to soon come to the Middle East: Instead of rivalry, revival; instead of the curse, the blessing, when the two brothers – sons of the same father – Ishmael and Isaac, will embrace one another. Then they will live in peace all over what was formerly the extension of the paradise of God, the lands of the biblical history – from the Nile in Egypt to the Euphrates in Assyria – the whole region will become again, as promised, a blessing in the midst of the earth.
May this then soon become the new reality in the Middle East, we pray!
Jan Willem van der Hoeven, Director
International Christian Zionist Center