Pass the Succotash!

The Puritans, pilgrims who settled America, were a people deeply rooted in their Hebraic roots. When they sailed to this land, they likened their journey to the Exodus of the Jews out of bondage and into the Promised Land. Max Dimont, in his book Jews, God and History, writes, "The Puritans, most of whom had Hebrew names, regarded themselves as the spiritual heirs of the Old Testament. In fact, there was even a proposal that Hebrew be made the official language of the Colonies, and John Cotton wanted to adopt the Mosaic code as the basis for the laws of Massachusetts." What a far, far cry we have come from our founders. They must be grieving in heaven today if they know of the laws Massachusetts has passed!

Because of their rich foundation in the Hebrew scriptures, the Puritans were undoubtedly celebrating the feast of Succot (the Feast of Tabernacles) in the autumn, when they invited their new-found native American friends to join them. The Native American tribes were teaching the new settlers how to grow new crops, such as corn and beans. Why else would we have this culinary combination known as SUCCOTash?! Though we don't see these crops listed in Leviticus or Deuteronomy, I think we can be sure that the Puritans were celebrating the agricultural harvest in their new land, and keeping the feast of Succot as commanded by Yahweh to all generations, forever! Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein is quoted as saying, "The American pilgrim fathers were, in all likelihood, inspired by the biblical account of Succot to pattern the holiday of Thanksgiving after."

Americans today do not know about this rich heritage - but joyfully, many of us are discovering our Hebrew roots and have already kept the feast of Succot (which this year was in mid-October). The Hebrew word succot means "to dwell with." It is the celebration of Yahweh dwelling with His people, and was undoubtedly the time when Yahshua (Jesus) was born as the incarnate Son of God. And this feast will be ultimately fulfilled when Yahshua returns to dwell with men forever. There could be nothing more wondrous to look forward to and to celebrate - and nothing for which we could be more thankful!

So as you gather together this Thursday,with family and friends, offer to Yahweh your thanks for all His many blessings; pray for repentance in our nation that has strayed so far from Him; and share this bit of heritage that came to us originally through a people who kept the feasts of the LORD. Then pass the turkey and the succotash!

God bless you. I am thankful for each one of you!

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, His Love endures forever! (Psalm 118:1)

The Living Menorah

Last evening I was e-mailing back and forth with a friend about the understandings of Hebrew words. One of the most beautiful Hebraic "pictographs" is found in the word menorah (the seven "candlestick" lampstand that stood in the Temple). The Hebrew word menorah is made up of three root words: the "men" is a prefix or root of the word melech which means kingdom. The Hebrew word or literally means light. The suffix ah is the shortened form of Yah, or Yahweh (God). Therefore the power-packed little word menorah means: THE LIGHT OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD!

Having pondered this anew last evening, I woke up this morning with a verse from Revelation Chapter 1 on my heart, and I got up early to read it and meditate on it. In this verse the apostle John, banished to the island of Patmos, is visited by Yahshua, the Messiah Himself, and this is what he sees:

"I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone 'like a Son of Man,' dressed in a robe reaching down to His feet and with a golden sash around His chest. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and His voice was like the sound of rushing waters." (Rev. 1:14-15).

Notice the descriptive words John uses to try, as best he can, to paint for us a picture of our Risen Messiah in all His glory! I highlighted the words that brought to life the picture of the Living King who IS the Light of the Kingdom of Yahweh, who IS the seven golden lampstands (the seven spirits of God - or the fullness of God's Spirit), blazing like fire, glowing like bronze in a furnace!

When John first told us about Yahshua in his account of the Gospel, He told us: "Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it." (John 1:3-5).

This is where our focus must be: on the Living Menorah, the Light of the Kingdom of God, who is in men [in us by the power of the Holy Spirit] and who will not be overcome by the darkness. No matter how fast we may be hurtling toward a New World Order, a global financial system, and a government that completely abandons God, let us be lights that shine in the darkness - knowing and believing that the darkness will not overcome us. May the Light in you bring LIFE today!

OCCUPY TILL I RETURN

I had a precious (and very long) phone conversation this morning with a dear sister whom I call "Zipporah." We had a lot to discuss and process because we discovered we've both been struggling with the same issue. We both believe that the horrific days described in Matthew 24 and in Revelation 6 and 8 are just ahead of us. The anticipation is hanging over us like thick darkness. And yet it is quiet, oh so quiet.

We confessed to one another that in this strange silence before the storm we are calling out to Yahweh, "How shall we prepare? What should we be doing? Surely there are things we should be doing to get ready for the ravages of great storms, food shortages, possible pandemics, and certain persecution against believers! " I told Zipporah how odd it has been feeling to me that my days are so simple and uneventful. I wake up in the morning, praise Yah for the beauty of another day, get in my car and thank Him for a reliable vehicle and the freedom to go wherever I want to drive - then go to the little chiropractic office where I work and greet the people with love, sometimes being allowed to pray for their healing - and then come home at lunch and throw in a load of laundry. Finally, I finish a workday and sit down to a lamb chop, baked sweet potato and some greens, giving thanks with a deeply grateful heart that I have plenty of food in the house and the warmth of my furnace at night. Then sometimes I teach a Bible lesson to a few old folks at my parents' retirement home. If it is an Erev Shabbat, I gather with my home group and we light two candles, welcoming in the Sabbath and sharing delicious food and robust Torah study.

"But that doesn't seem like I'm doing very much," I moaned to my friend on the phone. "It seems like in these days just before judgments and shaking, we should be doing something to be ready!" That is when the Lord interrupted our conversation and spoke these words: "OCCUPY TILL I RETURN."

Occupy? What does it mean to occupy?! These words are used in the parable of the ten minas (Luke 19:13). The king calls ten of his servants together and gives them each ten minas. Then he instructs them: "Occupy until I return." I looked the word occupy up in the Greek and the word is pragmateuomai. Here were the dictionary definitions:

1) to be occupied in anything
2) to carry on a business
3) to carry on the business of a banker or a trader

Not very exciting is it? Not thrilling or romantic or urgent! Just "to be occupied in anything." In other words, "carry on." And so with my friend still on the line, we asked the Master, "Show us what you mean by this, please, so that our hearts can be at rest." The Spirit spoke to me and said, "Get up in the morning and rejoice in the day that I have made. Go to your place of work and share My love, praying in everything. Wash your clothes - purify yourself - and assemble with My people. Remember the Seventh Day, to keep it holy. Give thanks in all things. Occupy till I return."

So, it is true: the will of God is simply stated for us in 1 Thessalonians 5:16: "Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." This is our preparation, we concluded. These are the simple things we must all do to prepare our hearts and minds for the days ahead. And then the Spirit continued and gave us one more precious word: "Then those who feared Yahweh talked with each other, and Yahweh listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in His presence concerning those who feared Yahweh and honored His name. 'They will be mine,' says El Shaddai, 'in the day when I make up my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as in compassion a man spares his son who serves him.'" (Malachi 3:16-17)

That was all we needed to know.

Your Family or His?

A wonderful brother in the faith responded to my blog about The Line in the Sand, and his response has given me 48 hours of deeply pondering something. The Rev. Jim Wilson leads an intercessory team of prayer warriors in California, and this was a part of his response:
"The Lord spoke to me some time back about why Jesus did not heal or teach the crowd, being content to let them throw down their stones and retreat. He said to me that Jesus could only do something with them as they were willing to step across the line and stand with Him and the sinful woman..."

The part of Jim's response that touched me so deeply was the word content. He said, "Jesus was content to let them throw down their stones and retreat." Why? Why did he bend down and draw a literal line across the desert sand? And why was He content to let them reject Him and leave?

On one side of the line we see Yeshua (Jesus) - together with a sinful woman who was repentant and at this point, facing death by stoning, utterly dependent upon the Lord for her life. On the other side we see the self-righteous, vindictive mob of people who were ready to stone her for her sin. The line offers an invitation - the same invitation Jesus offered to the Samaritan woman at the well: "Come to me and I will give you living water." But no one accepts the invitation; no one crosses the line to His side. The angry, probably embarrassed mob drop their stones on the ground and leave, unable to give any response, but also unwilling to stand beside the likes of the adulteress. Did they not recognize their need to repent for their own sin? Or, did they think they were above the need for a Messiah?

Yeshua obviously knew this was their heart condition, for as Jim points out, He did not waste time in teaching or healing there.

This whole illustration just confirms for me that we are in exactly that place right now. A clear separation is being made between those who are so hungry for Yeshua that we will die to self and live for Him - and those who prefer to stay in "Babylon," where they can continue in the pleasures and comforts of the world and keep control of their own lives.

I can relate to Yeshua's experience in this story. I have friends and members of my own family with whom I have shared the glorious redemptive story of Yeshua over and over, only to watch them say "No thanks," throw down their stones, and leave. And when I cried out to the Lord for them, so fearful that I might have to separate myself from them completely one day, He answered me with a heart-stopping question: "Do you want to be in YOUR family or MY family?"

The answer to this question, for all of us who call Him LORD, is found in the Scripture where Yeshua does not go outside to meet with his mother and brothers, but rather points to His disciples and says, "These are my mother and brothers." In other words, those who were giving up their own lives to follow Him were the ones He considered family. He always knew that the Father granted His creation free will to choose. Now it is a hard truth we must learn to embrace in our own day - being content that when we have done all we can, we must align ourselves with the family of Christ, and stand on HIS side of the line.

A Line in the Sand

On the morning after the U.S. presidential election I awoke and heard the Voice of the Lord say, "There is now a line drawn in the sand." This quickened powerfully in my spirit. The line in the sand is almost palpable in these post-election days, as we feel such a powerful separation occurring between those who have chosen Yahweh's precepts and values over anyone else's. I think it is the separation, the line in the sand, that has made many of us feel sad. We do not like division and separation. For most of us, the division is even affecting our immediate families. At my workplace I have heard stories of families that have now separated to the point of no longer speaking to one another.

Tim Wingate gave an illustration of ancient family division and fighting from the book of Judges:

5 The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan opposite Ephraim. And it happened when any of the fugitives of Ephraim said, "Let me cross over," the men of Gilead would say to him, "Are you an Ephraimite?" If he said, "No," 6 then they would say to him, "Say now, 'Shibboleth.'" But he said, "Sibboleth," for he could not pronounce it correctly. Then they seized him and slew him at the fords of the Jordan . Thus there fell at that time 42,000 of Ephraim."
Through history, a shibboleth has come to be a kind of linguistic password: A way of speaking or writing that identifies one as a member of a group. Today, it has also come to mean a point of difference and division. A person whose way of speaking or believing, as evidenced by actions, violates a shibboleth and is therefore identified as an outsider and thereby excluded by the group. It is an idiom in the nature of the idiomatic cliché, “to draw a line in the sand.”

Are we headed toward a time when believers will have a "password" such as shibboleth in order to know whom we can trust and join in community? Is the line of sand so entrenched now that Jesus' prophecy that father and son, mother and daughter would betray one another is a reality for us? Perhaps.

But a glimmer of hope remains within me, as I read the story about the wicked city of Nineveh. When Jonah had had enough sea-sickness and time-out in the bowels of the whale, and finally obeyed God and called Nineveh to repent, the entire city fell on their knees, cried out to the God of Israel, and was restored to His heart of blessing, peace, and prosperity by returning to His Torah. Pray for a Jonah in our time, and pray for the restoration of a nation once blessed by its foundation based upon the laws of Yahweh. A mighty wave of His Spirit could wash away a line in the sand.

Getting Vulnerable

The graphic picture of the aborted baby on the TruNews headline was horrific, wasn't it? But perhaps it shocked some of us into grasping the lateness of the hour and the tremendous amount of blood that has been spilled upon this nation.

I spilled some of that blood. Lest anyone think I send out these e-mails in self-righteousness or judgmental finger-pointing, I will get utterly vulnerable and confess my own sin in the matter. When I was seventeen years young, newly married to a man with great career ambitions, I got pregnant. We aborted the baby. I had been a church-goer in my youth, but I never knew the LORD in a relationship, and I certainly did not know His Word. Still, I knew within my heart that I had done a very terrible thing. But my inward guilt and suffering was not enough; Yahshua the Righteous King had plans for my life, and so it was necessary early on for me to learn the law of sowing and reaping.

At age 25 my husband and I greatly wanted a baby and again I got pregnant. I carried this precious little girl to full-term. She was born Oct. 28, 1975, two days after my birthday, weighing three pounds, 1 ounce. Several days later she died.
"After the time of mourning was over, David had Bathsheba brought to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing David had done displeased the Lord. Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the Lord." Nathan replied, "The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die. But because by doing this you have showed utter contempt for the Lord, the son born to you is going to die. After Nathan had gone home, the Lord struck the child that Uriah's wife had borne to David, and he became ill. David pleaded with God for the child. He fasted and wept into his house and spent the nights lying on the ground. On the seventh day the child died." (from 2 Samuel chapter 12)

We serve a holy and just God who cannot look upon or tolerate sin. In the fullness of time, He sent Yahshua haMashiach, Jesus our Messiah, to shed His own blood on the tree as atonement for our sin, opening up for us the glorious opportunity of living forever with Him. But it is still a law that we will reap what we sow. That is what happened on November 4. Like thousands others, I fasted and prayed and wept for weeks before the election, but the sin of our nation was too great, and the voices crying out to worship a human king were too many. Yahweh allowed Barak Obama to become President, in order that many would, like me, eventually see the wickedness and the spilled blood they have walked in, and truly repent and turn to Him. I rejoice that after the many terrible fires in California, the people went to the polls and banned same-sex marriage! He watches over His Word to accomplish it.

The Lord showed me in a dream one night that the little one I aborted 33 years ago is a boy named John. John must know his sister, Dena, for they are both in perfect eternity with the Father. One day I will be able to see them again, but I wonder, as I fall to my knees, if I will be able to find the words to tell them how grievously sorry I am? Perhaps this is the great storm of passion that fuels my desire to call others into repentance, and into a relationship with the One True Redeemer of their souls, whose blood speaks a better word than Abel's!

Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the Lord." Nathan replied, "The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die." Thank you, Yahshua, that I did not die for taking the life of my son, either. It is only because You died in my place.

Covering our Gopher Wood Bodies

In the Torah portion today we read the old familiar story of Noah, his family, and the building of the ark that would keep safe the various species of mankind and animals Yah had created. Why was this necessary? Because mankind had not only fallen into sin, but the sin had become so rampant, so overwhelming, that Yahweh could no longer tolerate that perverse generation. It used to seem like a children's "Sundy school story" to most of us, but in learning the Hebrew words used in the story, there is a far greater dimension to discover.

The wicked and perverse generation of Noah's day is not very far at all from today's generation. Yahshua warned us that the last days would be "as in the days of Noah." Men are marrying men, babies are being sacrificed in abortion, and our societies and our leaders are mocking God. Where is the ark being built today to deliver the righteous from God's wrath?

Notice that after making the ark, Noah was to coat the wood with pitch inside and out. In the Hebraic understanding, wood is synonymous with man’s mortality. The word pitch in Hebrew is kaphar (Strongs # 3722/3724) from the same root word that refers to the act of protecting - to cover, annul, forgive and pardon. Do you see the beautiful picture? Yahweh was prophesying through Noah and his family of future events that would cover, annul, forgive and pardon past transgressions and iniquities. Noah’s ark was actually a foreshadow of the promise given Eve that through her offspring would come One who would pardon and redeem His people.

In Genesis 6:14 God directs Noah, "Make yourself an ark of gopher wood and cover it inside and out with pitch." The verb and noun for the act of "covering" and the material "pitch" are both of the root word which makes up the Hebrew word kippur (as in Yom Kippur, Day of atonement). Our atonement means a covering of our sin, which was eventually accomplished through the blood of Yahshua, our Messiah.

As Rimona Frank writes, "Thus this ark is to become a shelter, offering a covering for the sins of the age, as it were. The rabbis believe that anyone, among those who had watched it being built through the many years of its construction, could have also found refuge in it. Instead, the spectators chose to scoff and ridicule its builder."

Indeed. Many today are scoffing and ridiculing those who believe in a Messiah whose blood is the pitch that covers our mortal "gopher wood bodies." They will try to tell you there are many other paths to heaven - but there is only one ark I want to board! This ark, like all boats, has a name - and it is the only name under heaven given to men by which we will be kept safe (covered, protected, forgiven, pardoned! Acts 4:12) - YAHSHUA!!