Derek Prince - The Idea That The Arabs Will Ever Willingly Make Peace With Israel Is A Fantasy
This is an excerpt from: Israel and the Church: Parallel Restoration
Going on with Ezekiel 36, at the end of the chapter after God has said «I will» eighteen times, it says in verse 37 «Thus says the Lord God, 'I will [and that's yet one more time] also let the house of Israel inquire of me to do this for them.'» So, God takes the initiative. He moves, we don’t deserve it, but at a certain point He requires a response. God says, «Now I’ve told you what to pray for, I expect you to pray for it». See, the kind of prayer that really accomplishes things is the prayer that God gives. Again, the initiative is with God. When it’s with God it succeeds.
Paul says in Romans 8: we don’t know how to pray for what we ought. We’ve got two limitations. We don’t know what to pray for and if we know what to pray for we still don’t know how to pray for it. But he says the Spirit helps us in our need. The answer to how to pray is to let the Holy Spirit come to your help. My first wife Lydia was a woman of prayer. She didn’t spend a lot of time on her knees, she did get on her knees, but she was praying all the time. She was praying when she washed diapers, when she stirred the soup. She was a woman of prayer. And when people asked her, «How do you pray?», her answer, and it wouldn’t be everybody’s answer, «I just open my mouth and let the Lord fill it».
In other words, I don’t rehearse my prayers, I don’t have a premeditated pattern of prayer, I let the Holy Spirit move in and do it through me. There’s a picture of the Bride of Christ in the Song of Solomon where she says, «I sleep but my heart wakes». That’s an intercessor, that’s someone who is praying even while they’re asleep. I used to say of my first wife, and it’s equally true of my second wife, you know the Buddhists have what they call a prayer wheel? When they want to pray they start turning their wheel. I say my wife is my prayer wheel. I preach, she prays. That’s not exhaustively true because I do pray also but I don’t have that total ability to turn loose and pray at any time. I got things pretty carefully categorized and I do the right thing at the right time. So, I want to encourage those of you. This isn’t in my outline but I feel, if you’re an intercessor, yield to the Holy Spirit. Learn to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit. Let Him pray the prayer that God wants to hear.
See, the real secret of intercession is letting God give it to you, then giving it back to God. Now we just have a few moments left, I want to say four more things from this parallel between Israel and the church. The restoration of Israel in Ezekiel 37 is compared to the reuniting of bones into a body. You know that vision of the valley of dry bones. There are three successive phases. Number one, you just have the bones. Ezekiel prophesied, the bones begin to move, there’s a rattling noise, they come together into complete bodies and then the sinews and the flesh come up on them. But they’re still lifeless. Then God says to Ezekiel, «Prophesy once more. Prophesy to the breath, to the wind».
In Hebrew it’s ruach which is really the word spirit. «Prophesy to the Spirit and say, 'Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live.'» The scripture says: «When I prophesied they stood up on their feet an exceedingly great army». That’s God’s end, it’s an exceedingly great army. But He has to bring the scattered bones together before they can become an army. Then He has to breathe into them the supernatural presence and power of the Holy Spirit. I want to say something else. At least there’s one person here who will support me, I think two because I think my wife will! I’m not committing her to that but the vision that Ezekiel had was of these dry bones in a big open expanse. The Lord said, «I will bring you up out of your graves and bring you into the land of Israel».
Forgive me but I think there are a lot of Jewish believers who’ve come up out of their graves but they’re still in the graveyard. Is that right? What’s the graveyard? The Diaspora. A Jew is not really fully alive until he’s back in his land. You can pray over that, question it, but I believe God gave it to me. I’m not Jewish, I’m exempt. But, I happen to live there and I’ll tell you, it’s not easy to live in Israel. If I wanted an easy life, Jerusalem wouldn’t be the place I’d choose. But, in a very special sense it’s the place where things happen, it’s the place from which God initiates action. Then the restoration is also compared in Ezekiel 37 to the reuniting of two divided people, Israel and Judah.
The picture is Ezekiel takes two sticks, writes the name of Judah and Ephraim on the sticks, holds them together in his hand and supernaturally they are joined into one stick. That is restoration. It’s the reuniting of a divided people. I want to say to the church Jesus is not a polygamist. He’s coming back for one bride and it won’t be a Catholic bride and it won’t be a Protestant bride. It will be a bride of men and women who’ve given themselves without reservation to the Lordship of Jesus in their lives. I think denominational labels may remain but I trust they’ll be no more than labels. They won’t contain the real inner reality which is a person totally given over to the Lordship of Jesus.
And finally, and this is just a final thought, the cost of restoration. Restoration is not easy, it’s painful. You face loneliness, discouragement, hard work. Think of the pioneers of Israel who returned to a land of swamps and malaria and hostility. Many of them died before they’d been there long. That’s the cost of restoration. And then today they are faced with ceaseless hostility from the surrounding nations.
I just want to say I’m impartial, I’m not Jewish, I’m not Arab. But the idea that the Arabs will ever willingly make peace with Israel is a fantasy. It’s something they exploit with which to manipulate the United States. And any significant Arab leader that did make peace would follow the fate of Sadat. Assassination is a major political instrument amongst the Arab peoples. So, How about it? Are we excited? Are we committed? Do we want to line up with God’s purposes? And be part of what God is doing in the earth?