The Beautiful
Faces of Israeli Ministries
If you can identify the Israelis in this photo montage,
then you've probably been a subscriber of mine for a long while.
My 20th Anniversary Issue
by Donna Diorio
The pictures above are just some of the many beautiful faces of those in Israel
who are fulfilling Isaiah 52:7 today. “How
beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who
proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to
Zion, “Your God reigns!”
But look at that with the key words in
Hebrew:
"How beautiful on the
mountains are the feet of those
who basar/ gladden with good news,
who šama’
šhalôm/shema – Hear, O Israel: Peace, completeness, soundness,
welfare,
who basar tôb/declare benefits,
who proclaim yešû’â /Yeshua His Name means salvation,
who say to Zion, “Your 'elohîm/GOD
reigns!”
The beautiful faces above are the
ones whose beautiful feet are doing
those things in Israel today –
CURRENTLY, not at some future time. They are not being prompted,
organized or led by Christian ministries to spread the Gospel in Israel, but
some Christians have followed God’s call to come alongside the Israeli
ministries in prayer, finances and other practical help. They are HELPERS of
the Israeli ministries so they may fulfill Isaiah 52:7 as they are called to do.
NOW Yeshua is being proclaimed in
Israel. Those who are proclaiming Yeshua’s salvation on the mountains of Israel
are these Israeli ministries and many more that I feature each week. This has
been the main purpose of the Weekly Summary and Arrows from Zion for the past twenty years.
Many in the Christian world are
expecting Israel’s salvation to come another way – like through their
Gospel-less donations to forge friendships with Israeli rabbinic or government
figures. They think that is the witness that will win Israelis to
faith…eventually. Scripture says “faith comes by hearing the Word of God.”
These are the Christian Zionists who don’t want anyone mentioning Jesus to
Israelis; some even think the Israeli Messianic Jews are a heretical cult, it
you can believe that! And a great many Christians are surprised to even learn there
are almost 20,000 Israeli Messianic Jewish believers in Jesus who are ALREADY
bearing witness to Israel’s Messiah Yeshua.
The salvation of Yeshua is being
declared in earnest in Israel ALREADY. They are not waiting for some future
moment because the time is ALREADY here. They don’t need Christian Zionist permission to share their own faith and
the personal benefits they have experienced of Yeshua’s salvation.
I am NOT against Christian Zionism,
I’m just against the kind that denies
the Gospel is for all Jews
right now. The clock is ALREADY ticking
and it is GOD’s clock! There are over 1 million Messianic Jews worldwide and
the salvation specifically of Israeli Jews is gaining speed with every year
that has passed since 1948. Israeli Messianic believers who are bearing the
witness to Israel and “for Zion’s sake”
they too will not be silenced.
It is also amazing to me but some
Christians just reject the concept that Israeli
Jews are God’s lead players in bringing the Gospel to Israel. Some of them
think that God is on the verge of sending a flood of fiery international
Christian evangelizers into Israel to bring Jews to faith in the Yeshua. This
stops them from throwing their full support behind the Israeli ministries who
are providing a credible witness to
Israeli Jews, because they are Israeli Jews. Christians are necessary to
bringing Israel to faith, but mostly as helpers, not as the lead in that
harvest field. Christians who want to contribute to Israel’s salvation have got
to lose the takeover mentality and be humble enough to see God’s calling in the
Israeli spiritual vineyard is resting on the beautiful faces you see in the
pictures above along with their many fellow Israeli Messianic Jews. The help they need is funding to send out the
laborers into the harvest field.
A
few weeks ago I got in a ministry letter that featured one of the
congregational team members and the photo startled me. My immediate thought
was, “Wow. This is what Jesus could have looked like!” The man in the photo had
such a calm, serene, kindly yet strong countenance. It was the kind of demeanor
I think Yeshua would have had. There is another one of the Israeli ministers I
have thought for a long time could be what the apostle Paul may have looked like.
I’ve been thinking about this over
the past week or so and thought that since Christians have been reading our
bibles we have imagined what some favorite Bible characters looked like. Even
though most of the figures in the Bible are predominantly Jewish, what we
visualized probably is more how people in our own nations look. Renaissance
paintings of a blue-eyed Jesus points to that tendency we all share. The artists might have painted biblical
characters in clothing of the era but not necessarily in the physical
appearance of Jews of that era before there was much diffusion of the ethnic
Middle Eastern appearance of Israelis.
At Rosh HaShanah 5782/2021, there is
no longer a primary ethnic appearance among Jews. Scattered to the four corners
of the earth now many “communities” of Jews depending upon which corner of the
earth they are returning to Israel from – Mizrachi, Sephardic, Ethiopian,
Askenazic, even Bene Indian and Far Eastern.
It dawned on me that never before in
history have we had so great an opportunity to see Jews living in Israel with
authentic resemblance to our most beloved biblical figures. All Jews are Jews,
but as I was choosing which photos to use for this cover story I was drawn to
those that reminded me of how I visualize biblical figures. Among the many I
consider my Israeli friends I saw people who could easily have been just
exactly what Elijah looked like, or John the Baptist. I saw in them Mary
Magdalene, Dorcas and Deborah. I look at
their pictures and see Simon Peter, Jael, Asaph, John, Barnabas, Simeon and
Anna. That is not trying to puff anyone up – it’s just a fact! They bear the
resemblance of their ancestors. With all the focus on tracking our ancestry in
recent years, maybe you have noticed like I have that in families there are
pictures that turn up of some great, great grandmother or grandfather that so
strongly resembles one of their descendants alive today. We are all unique
people but we come from family lines that often produce uncannily strong familial
physical resemblance.
I
believe there is another good reason why it is so easy to see the Israeli
ministries as the biblical characters we love. It has to do with a change
that seems to take place inside of Jews restored to the Land of Promise. Their
physical DNA does not change, but there is something that changes within for
them. They are home – the home God gave them – and just being home brings them
more into the expression of their authentic self. That is what I believe and I
believe it is that way because God wants
it to be that way, part of His draw of the Jews back to their original home
in the time of His spiritual restoration of the chosen people.
The connection between the Jews and
the Land He gave them is more than just a sentimental longing for one’s
homeland. Israel is the place where Jews not only come back into their own
Jewish identity, but it is the place God
has appointed for them to become fully spiritually restored to Him. They
have paid a lot to be chosen by God for His purposes, but He has a good end for
them and He will fulfill it.
For
the Messianic Jew who has returned to Israel, or the Jew who has returned to
Israel and found faith in Yeshua, or even the native Israeli Jew who becomes a
believer – all of these Jews have something even more in common with our biblical favorite characters. It is
because they too are “a peculiar people”
just like both the Old and New Covenant Jews of faith who walked in a living
relationship with God. Both Christians
and Messianic Jews belong this “peculiar people” spiritual family. To belong to
this family we must enter it God’s way
which is today through faith in Yeshua. We
have to be in the Blood-line.
Israeli Messianic Jews have been
called to faith “according to His purpose” to restore “all Israel” to a living
relationship with YHVH through Yeshua.
They are the only Israelis who share the same spiritual DNA as our favorite Old and New Covenant figures. More
will come into faith, but until then, the Messianic Jews connection to the God
of Israel is not just because of being in the Jewish bloodline, but they are
connected to God’s greater spiritual family through the sacrificial blood of
Yeshua. This was God’s plan, to make of two one new man in Messiah.
Each and every one of the Israeli
ministry leaders from the smallest to the largest ministry – are Jews who have
been set apart by God to bring salvation to the lost sheep in Israel. They
heard God’s call and they came. Some came from worse living situations but many
came from much better living situations. For better or for worse they came to
Israel and they are committed to living out God’s calling on their lives, even
sacrificially.
In my mind, that is what sets the
Israeli ministries apart from Messianic Jewish ministries all over the world.
Yes, there is still need for Messianic leaders in the Diaspora but I believe
that we
should give honor where honor is overdue. In the Israeli ministries
there is a stronger measure of sacrifice than exists among most of the Israeli
Messianic Jewish ministries in the nations, at least in the Western nations
(and at least for now).
To me, the reason Israeli ministries
so strongly resemble biblical characters are because they are literally walking
in the footsteps of the ancient Jews of
faith in Israel. May the future
of this prayer letter as long as it may continue, always give honor to the
Israeli ministries and those who are walking out their faith in Yeshua as a witness to all Israel.
Arrows from Zion
Summarized
from the Weekly Summary of Prayer
Requests Israeli Ministries
A report from Jackie Santoro of Zion’s Glory in Jerusalem captures the ongoing
stresses facing all Israelis – but not without hope! School is starting just as
confusion and uncertainty are swirling over the new Delta Covid variant. Then
starting 9/6 with Rosh HaShanah, school will be out for a month for the High
Holy Days.” Jackie writes, “The joy of the holidays
are muted...people are going about their business but there is a ‘carefreeness’
that is gone. Most are cautious, uncertain, confused and doing their best to
just ‘stay afloat.’ Life is different.”
She asks for prayers over PM’s Bennett & Lapid to know what to do. A very
ominous report: “Not only the virus advance which is a constant pressure but
now seven hospitals are threatening a strike because of lack of funding and are
refusing to take new Covid cases as they say they are overwhelmed and don't
have money or staff to deal with it.” The security issues for Israel have not
subsided on any front and you can read more of that in Jackie’s Online version of this
letter, including a good report about God directing her after she asked for
someone to talk to about Yeshua.
Jackie also writes that their
congregation Ahavat
Yeshua in Jerusalem has had to go
back to zoom meetings due to the covid restrictions and that “many of our
members are still out of work due to the lack of tourism. It has become a
difficult trial and a challenge to maintain our sense of unity and community.
Please pray for our leadership for wisdom and supernatural strategy to find a
way to overcome all these obstacles. We know God is always victorious.”
In 20 years of doing this weekly prayer letter, I have never known of a time when the need among believers in Israel was so great. The ministries are surely underfunded, but at this moment in time, whole congregations are suffering greatly because of Covid. They are our family in Jesus and we are told in Galatians 6:10 "As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith."
From Israel Pochtar in Ashdod’s Beit Hallel & Voice of Judah ministries,
this VIDEO & Article The Biblical
Feast of Trumpets — Prophetic Road Signs of What is to Come . Also a
1 minute VIDEO praise report Awake Youth
Conference: Praise Report! And an encouragement he sends following
the youth conference to develop The Culture
of Bible Reading among youth: “You’d
be surprised how many messianic and Christian kids don’t actually read the
Bible or don’t know how to approach reading it.” Pochtar is also praising God for the Storehouse
of Blessing. If you want to add to it: The High
Holidays - An Opportunity to Reflect God’s Goodness | Lastly, if you
are in the Dallas/Ft Worth area, Come Meet
Pastor Israel in Person in Texas | You are invited to join Pastor Israel Pochtar for
a free dinner and fundraising banquet!
Ahead of the High Holy
Days, Chuck Cohen of Intercessors for Israel in Jerusalem writes, Salvation | The feasts of the Lord (Lev. 23:2) – Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Succoth –
are in September this year. That makes this an appropriate time to pray for the
salvation of the Jewish people, as this is when many Jews are asking God to
save them. Yet many of them have a distorted image of Yeshua from the
Christians who think of Israel's Messiah as some type of "Cosmic
Christ" with absolutely no connection to His Jewish family in the flesh.
Also, many Jewish rabbis have not presented the whole picture of the promised
Messiah from the Tanach to His people. And so we pray.” Friday Prayer Points 8/20/21 and 8/27/21 (excerpts
read in full online)
Out of Zion Ministries’ David Silver sent out a comment
that are almost identical to my own regarding the vaccine. Read it on Kehila News Israel: What is Coming After Delta and How do We Protect
Ourselves? Also Join David Silver for video each week
on the news impacting Israel : Midweek Update Video for 8/24/21 and 8/31/2021
Ron Cantor writes about
the second year of ShelanuTV and all the exciting things going on as they are
speaking daily to Israelis in Hebrew about how the Messiah Yeshua is “ours” —
not some foreign god, but the Messiah the Jews have been looking for. “I am
amazed that we have been able to produce so much content in such a short period
of time. It is the grace of God! There has never been so much native Israeli,
born-again content available as there is today. . . . as this God-injected content
is being released, we see disbelief and bias begin to crumble and the light of
the truth shine through, reaching hearts. We are going to see a change in
Israel as people turn towards the light of the life of Yeshua and are saved!
We reached just under a quarter of a million people
during the month of June.
Cantor
continues, “as with all harvests, it’s vital that you know what SEASON you are
in. I'm no farmer or gardener – at least not in the natural, but I am in the
spirit! Right now, it is SEED PLANTING time and WATERING time … and even
before that, there are some areas where we are breaking up the hard ground.
JOIN US in this exciting adventure to reach ALL of ISRAEL with the gospel.
Until all Israel is saved (Romans 11:26)
Donate
to help us.
Fields of Wheat and Katzir minister Joel Jelski is currently in West Texas. He
has some open dates in Texas and writes, “I am
looking for people who might be willing to host a small group in their home and
invite friends/people they know who would be interested in connecting with
someone from Israel. The dates available for that would be the evenings of
September 10-11 (Friday-Saturday), 16, 17, 18 (Thursday-Saturday). If you
would be interested, feel free to email me. I also still have two Sundays available to
speak at a church. If you know a church that would be interested, I am
available the Sundays of September 12 and 19.”
(Just before leaving Israel Joel and Teresa found out they are having
another boy. Joel asks prayers for his family as he travels.)
Revive Israel has been developing an online video resource that we can tune
into for “Praise, Prophecy, Prayer, and Preaching” from their team in
Jerusalem. Watch Eitan Shishkoff in the
8/26 GLOBAL BROADCAST preaching about the subject of his new book, With All
Your Heart – book available at Amazon. In the
previous week 8/19 Asher Intrater taught about SOZO
(Salvation & Healing). At the same VIDEOS link you can catch up
on several of Asher Intrater's recent mini-teachings, like Keys to Open and Close, Praying
for Jerusalem and Cities You Didn't
Build.
If you haven’t caught the thrust of
what Tikkun Global/Revive Israel are doing, they are sending the word of the
Lord out to the nations from Jerusalem just as Isaiah 2 says will happen in the
last days.. We don’t have to wait until they come to our town, in fact we
should not! They can come to us now without ever having to leave their
responsibilities to the Israelis they are ministering to. It is time to break the
paradigm of thinking that says they must come to us every summer on tour for us
to establish relationship with them.
Technology has made it possible for us to make the world so much
smaller, we should avail ourselves to those resources to gather together for Praise,
Prophecy, Prayer, and Preaching from Israel.
In Arad, the Hasdey Yeshua report is on the truly
troubled lives that Bedouin women are living under. This is not a new thing
under any of the Arabic cultures, Islam or Bedouin, but Hasdey Yeshua is seeing
some heartbreaking things with the women they are ministering to close to Arad.
It is like the Psalms 6:6 verse they quoted in their opening: “I am weary with my groaning; all night I
make my bed swim. I drench my couch with my tears.” If ever there was a people bearing a weight
that would cause them to look to the LORD for deliverance, it is these women.
Even so, it is not easy for them to come to faith because if anyone found out,
their lives would be even more under threat. Even Beduoin men who have come to
faith have had to leave the area entirely so not to be killed. Yet God is
stirring among these needy women. Pray that He will make a way for them where
there is no way to be seen.
The congregation writes that a young
adult who is about to enter pre-IDF service responded to discipleship studies
for months with a desire to be baptized. Pray for her to continue to grow in
faith. Also, for those touched in a recent trip to northern Israel where the
biblical significance of various sites was taught – even to an unbeliever who
came. They appreciate your prayers for
their city, their mayor, their congregation and their outreaches.
The HaMaayan congregation in Kfar Saba are asking if we are in Revival or Survival? (Read the whole prayer letter at their blog). “In the midst of natural disasters, wars and rumors of wars and the new pandemic Covid wave, we have a choice to respond either by Fear or by Faith. Are we seeking Revival or Survival?” They continue, “Until Yeshua, our Lord returns, His great commission to be His witnesses and make disciples are still our marching orders for His body today. (Acts 1:6-8) It is so amazing to see that our congregation has provided a haven, a refuge for generations of children and youth, young adults, holocaust survivors and young families. This year, we have experienced births, baptisms, salvations, healing, and a wedding. These are healthy signs of the Lord working in our midst as we choose to put our trust in Him. Prayer and worship (harps and bowls) together with fasting, are great tools to further Yeshua’s agenda for His body, His Land and His people.” Get the full prayer requests at the link above.
If you think that God’s “Book of Life” which plays a key role in the High Holy Days that are about to start September 6th, then you need to do a phrase study like Acco’s Harvest of Asher pastor Guy Cohen did. I wish this was up online somewhere because he has done an excellent job of putting the “Book of Life” concept from the Hebrew scriptures into context with the New Testament scriptures. It is pretty powerful. Even in Revelation it is stressed that our names must we written in God’s Book of Life. Guy concludes his presentation of the Book of Life scriptures writing, “As a Messianic Jew, looking towards my people, I am compelled to come before God in intercession asking that their eyes would be opened to the One who has already made provision for their eternal salvation; that all may be sealed, written in the book of life. He is the Book of Life. Blessings for the New Year.”
Ronit Bender is in the Haifa region, and goes to the
Kerem-El congregation (promise to get that prayer letter in next week). It is a
planting of the Carmel Congregation. Ronit is one of those Israeli believers
who very actively shares her faith in her daily life in Israel. She and her husband did so before Tom passed
a few years back and Ronit continues on to be a witness of Yeshua through
treating the people she meets well, blessing them when she can, and always
ready to tell them about the source of her 'joie de vivre' (joy of living). She
listens to the LORD and He leads her to people…like recently when she was going
to buy an espresso maker, but God stopped her. Most days she goes out for
coffee and often when she does, that’s when God puts people in her path that
she can plant the seeds of faith into her lives. First Ronit is a friend, or to
some who feel invisible to others like the restroom cleaner, she is able to
bless and spread a little sunshine in their lives. It wouldn’t be the first
time that a person she blessed came back around to learn more about the source
of her being so different to others they meet. In the US there is a thing
called doing “a random act of kindness.” That’s okay, but what Ronit is doing,
there’s nothing random about it. When the LORD is our family and He is ours, we
can draw on His goodness, His mercy, His generosity and extend it to others who
don’t know Him yet. Imagine what would
happen if we all practiced this? To learn more about this native Israeli, write
her at tbender1@fastmail.fm
Urgent HEALING Needs: Life and Death is
in the power of the tongue
Please keep in prayer
the Israeli believers who are fighting for their lives or other urgent health
needs:
Please Pray for David Friedman in
Jerusalem. From his wife, "For all those who know and love my husband,
David...now is the time to pray. A doctor looked in on him earlier. The event
was a cardiac arrhythmia. At present he is stable, but obviously quite serious.
He is in a medically induced coma - intubated." | Claude Ezagouri of the Morning Star
Fellowship who has started a treatment that is due to last at least 6 months
for a medical problem he has been suffering from. Believe in prayer with them as they look to
the Lord for complete healing and for
prompt recovery from some other ailments. | Ronit Bender finally
has seen a new cardiologist she likes because he is caring, she’s taking new
meds, feels better but still asks for our prayers | Pray for Carolyn Hyde whose left hand is so
pained she can no longer play guitar and it is also sometimes painful to play
piano | Silvers: David's knees and Josie's back pain | A prayer request for Naomi, for a dear
family that is a part of Israel Pochtar's pastoral team, who was diagnosed with
colon cancer. "Despite what this battle entails, we are confident in God’s
unfailing Word and promises." Read in her
own words| Please continue to pray for Jacob Damkani for the LORD's mercies over Jacob and his dear wife, Elisheva | Dov Bikas
– I have been very
tired these days: probably as a result of a combination of factors: my age,
stress of the days of running to the bomb shelter, work load in the ministry,
etc. Olga Bikas: We are
grateful that Olga is feeling better these days! Though the doctors never found
the cause of the dizziness that put her in hospital a month ago, they did rule
out major issues like brain tumors, heart problems, etc., so this is already
comforting. Olga’s back also keeps improving and she is able to walk more
outside now than she did before.
Thank you for donating to my ministry if it is a blessing to you.♥
PayPalMe/DonnaDiorio or search PayPal for: donna@israelprayer.com
By postal mail make donations payable to the order of Donna Diorio
P O Box 111302 Carrollton, Texas 75006 | I do not have tax exempt status.
