Jentezen Franklin - Revealing Israel's Destiny - Part 2
Well, I wanna welcome you to a very special edition of Kingdom Connection. We are in a very special place. Recently, the Lord blessed us with a new campus, and we are in the process of getting that open. And one of the... it's in the area of Alpharetta, by the way, if you're in that area, we'd love for you to check it out. And this is the first time that we have ever been on this campus preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and it's pretty, pretty remarkable, pretty moving. And you're gonna get a personal message. Normally, I'm preaching in front of our church and, you know, to our campuses, but I invited some special friends and folks that are part of our ministry to come.
And as I watch the news, as you've watched the news, my heart has been so heavy for the nation of Israel and for the war that is taking place for the Palestinian people in harms way. The women, the children, the Christian brothers that I know and have over there, and people that I have done business with as I've gone over there in the shops and everything else. I've taken, literally, thousands of people to visit the nation of Israel. I've developed longtime relationships with people, Palestinian people, Arab people, who I know today need our prayers. We stand with Isarel, but we pray for the light of the gospel and the love of God to shine to all men. And I even pray for the terrorists that they would see Jesus real fast and go to heaven, amen, if they're not ready. And I do believe that he who guards Israel will not slumber or sleep.
I wanna talk to you again today about why we stand with Israel, and why we believe that you need to understand a biblical world view concerning the nation of Israel. Deuteronomy 7:6. Remember again what God says about natural Israel, he says about spiritual Israel, His church. Every one of these words are love words towards, this is under the old covenant, but we're under, according to Hebrews, a new and better covenant by the blood of Jesus Christ. We are now part of that blessing.
And in Deuteronomy 7:6, "For you are," listen to this. He's speaking to the nation of Israel and to the Jewish people, "For you are a holy people to the Lord your God, the Lord your God," listen to these words, "Has chosen you to be apart for himself, a special treasure," that's what God says over you too. He says it over the nation of Israel, and you better hear it. You better hear it, Iran. You better hear it, Hamas. You better hear it, Hezbollah. You better hear it, haters of Israel. God says, "That nation and that people are a special treasure above all the people of the earth". Verse 7, he said, "The Lord did not set His love on them nor choose them because they were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all the people".
Now, that's our testimony. That's my testimony. I don't feel like I have a right to be preaching to you. I don't know why God has given me the pulpit that He has, because I am the least and probably the least qualified, the least in every way except God chose. And He chose you and He chose you, that's why you're watching this program. God doesn't love us because we're valuable. We're valuable because God loves us. And if God be for us, who can stand against us? Israel is a special people, and God commands us to not only love the land of Israel, the Holy Land, Jerusalem and Capernaum, and the sea of Galilee, and all of Bethlehem, and all of the beautiful places of history and biblical fulfillment.
But He commands us not... and He talked about in those verses, not just the land of Israel, but the people of Israel, the Jewish people. God has sovereignly chosen Israel as His people. Israel is a nation that is God-created, it is God-decreed, it is God-loved, it is God-called. Israel is God-elected, and Israel is God-protected. They are a special, special people. And as for natural Israel, the same is for you, the same is for me. Praise the Lord. He chose me, I didn't choose Him.
And when you understand that, it ought to make you pray. Maybe everything's not going like you wish it was going in your life, but you're still chosen. And everybody God ever chose in the Bible, went through seasons of loneliness and pain, and went through seasons of crisis in their families, and went through incredible times of challenge and didn't know what they were gonna do or where they were gonna turn. That doesn't mean you're not chosen because you go through tribulation, and you go through hard times. Matter of fact, if I were the Devil, I'd fight you more than I fought the average person, because you are chosen.
Israel secondly, is not just a special people, but they have a very special purpose. Listen to this. Isaiah 43:7, "God has chosen Israel for His glory". They are a special people with a very special purpose, to glorify God. To show the world that He chooses the least and He takes the most likely to fail. The odds are stacked against you. The person in the back of the line, the person that other people overlook, the person that other people say is trash, God says, "They're a special treasure and I will raise them, and I will bless them, and I will use them". And the secret sauce to their life will be Jesus is the center of my life, and He gets all the glory. God made a covenant with one Jew named Abram, changed his name to Abraham.
I wanna tell you, thirdly, that Israel's not only a special people and they have a special purpose, but they are under special protection. And I don't care what MSNBC says, I don't care what ABC says, and I don't care what CNN says, or anybody on FOX news says, or anybody out there in a university or some professor, some crazy politician who berates and is antisemitic. I tell you, God protects the nation of Israel. And you better hear it, United Nations. And you better hear it, Iran. And you better hear it, Hamas. And you better hear it, Hezbollah. God himself has an angel, the most powerful warring angel named Michael. And he said, "I assigned", this is in Daniel 8. This is in Daniel, the book of Daniel 9. He says, "I assigned that angel to defend that nation".
I don't wanna fight against an angel, because one of them in the Old Testament slew 185,000 Assyrians in one night when they came against the nation of Israel. And that's the only way you explain why Israel is still in existence today, because they had been threatened many, many times but they're under special protection. God actually says this in Jeremiah 31:35. He says, and I'mma just sum it up, but he says, "In order to destroy the Jews, you would have to destroy the power that regulates the sun, the moon, and the stars". And when you can do that, when you can destroy the universe itself, then you can destroy Israel, because God said, "He who watches and keeps Israel," Psalms 121, "Will not slumber and will not sleep".
And I tell you, that ought to make you rejoice because I don't know what you're going through, but God has not forgotten about you. He's watching over you, over your family. You may be walking through the valley of the shadow of death, but God says, "I am with you and no weapon formed against you," Israel, natural Israel and spiritual Israel. Give me a big amen. That's you. "No weapon formed against you shall prosper. Every tongue that rises up". Sometimes the greatest weapon that will come against you is people's tongues, but He said it will not prosper. He didn't say it wouldn't be formed, He didn't say you wouldn't be attacked, but He said, "It will not ultimately prosper cause I've got divine, special protection over my own". You cannot destroy God's people and their purpose, they are protected.
Fourthly, Israel is a very special place. I've been there many, many times. So many times, I don't know how many. I was there this year. Something's happening in the world, folks. Something's happening in the church. Something's happening among young people. Something, there's a stirring going on. This is no time for church as usual. This is no time for Christian TV as usual. I'm telling you, you better be ready, Jesus is coming again. You better get right, backslider. There are preacher's kids that are watching me right now, you don't know why you're watching. Somebody's sitting there with a bottle of liquor, and you're high, you're drunk, but you're watching me. By the grace of God, it could be me, but by the grace of God. But I'm telling you, now is the time to come back home.
This thing, we need to be ready. We need to be living at high alert. I believe in life, I believe you ought to plan like you got a hundred-year vision, go to school, get your education, get married, have babies, live it up, have a wonderful time, enjoy life, but keep an urgency, keep a passion, keep a fire down in you. In the parable of the ten virgins that Jesus taught about his return, all of them knew he was, the bride groom was coming. All of them knew, but they all fell asleep. A lot of people in the body of Christ have fallen to sleep. Many have not returned since COVID. Thank God that's not true at our church, but I hear it from my other friends. And in that parable, what is so astounding, is Jesus said, Jesus had just taught in Matthew 24, "Two will be working in the field, one will be taken, one will be left behind".
Jesus, Himself, preached the rapture. I don't understand why preachers can just see the news and see all that is happening, and never get up and go right on with their little outline as though about how to have a better this and that, when we really need to turn our hearts to God. There's seasons when God says, "Rend your hearts, and not your garments. I want you to, I want you to get brutally honest and search your heart and know where you stand with me". That's what God is saying. Saying, "Repent," and He's saying, "Come home and get right". These are not normal days. And in that parable that Jesus He did a whole chapter, chapter 24 is nothing but Jesus' sermon on end time prophecy. The whole chapter, every word.
And then, immediately in verse 1 of chapter 25, He goes into the parable of the ten virgins and how they all fell asleep, and ten of them had oils in their lamps or had, five of them had oil in their lamps and five of them did not. And the only reason that I can find why Jesus told that parable, He said, "When the bridegroom came in the midnight hour, when they weren't looking for him, five of them were ready and five of them were not ready". And the only reason that Jesus told that parable was He was saying, "It is possible, when I return for my bride, that there will be people who will think they are ready, but in reality, 50%", In Jesus' own end time sermon, He said, "50% are not... they know I'm coming, they know who I am, but they are not ready for my soon return".
Not only is Israel special people in a special purpose, under special protection, but it's a special place. God put His people in a special place. I would encourage you if you... I don't know if we'll ever get to go back to the Holy Land, ain't that something? I don't know. I don't know if I've been over there for the last time. If you ever get a chance to go when you get out on the sea of Galilee and it hits you, "This is where He walked on the water". You go to Caiaphas' house, and you realize, "He was here". The steps date back to the very time when Jesus would have been wounded, and beaten, and slapped, and the beard plucked from His face, and a crown of thorns shoved on His skull. The whipping post. And you stand there, and you go to those sites, you go to the upper room, you realize, "I'm in Jerusalem".
And I think it's so significant that the word "Jerusalem" is spelled, J-E-R and right in the middle of it is U-S-A, Lem, L-E-M. God help America, USA to always stand with Jerusalem and Israel, and it's a special place. And God said in Genesis 12:3, "I will bless those that bless Israel. And I will curse those that curse Israel". And I pray to God that all of the church, the body of Christ, and all of you will never fail to defend the land of Israel. If you're gonna become school teachers, if you're gonna become politicians, if you're gonna become leaders in the world that God put you in, always stand with Israel and stand for the people of Israel and pray for the people Israel.
Does that mean we don't love Palestinians, we don't love Arabs? No. No, no, we love them, we pray for them, we send support. We're working on something even now to help, but we know biblically, we are to stand firm with the nation of Israel. Why? Because it's a special place. Think about this in closing. Good took out of the whole earth, He found one land, and He called it, "My Holy Land". And then, out of that nation he found one city, and it was nothing but a mountain. The same place where Abraham raised the knife in willing obedience, and was gonna stab his son, Isaac, and he heard a voice say, "Stay your hand".
Guess where it was? It was on that hill. And God said in that same place where He started the covenant with, God said, "Now I know I can trust you. Now I know". And you know, during that time, biblically, I don't know if you've ever realized this, the way that they worshipped in that area, the heathens, is they would offer their firstborn in fire. And he went up there, put the wood on his boy's back. The Bible said, "The lad carried the wood. He's climbing up Mount Calvary a type". The Bible said that, "As he goes", it took him three days to get to the top, to climb the mountain. Three days.
In the father's mind, the son was dead. He knew why he was going up there... And when he raised the hand and was about to stab Isaac, a picture of Jesus Christ on calvary, a voice said, "Stay your hand," but the next time the fulfillment of that happened in a city that that same hill would be called Calvary now in the same vicinity. The father did not say, "I'm gonna let the cup pass, but this time you're the lamb of God". And, by the way, he told Abraham, "The reason I want you not to kill that son is I have a ram caught in the thicket. I've got the sacrifice". The Bible said, "I have prepared himself, myself".
That's what it says in the text if you read the King James. He said, "I've prepared myself a ram". That's, that's in the Old Testament, but here comes Jesus, God in skin. And He dies on the cross in a place called Jerusalem on a hill. And God says, "That's my hill, that's my city, that's my land, that's my nation". We better be prayerful people. You go to Israel, natural Israel, you go to the Wailing Wall, the Eastern Wall and they are a praying people. You will see those Rabbis pray and you will see them bring their children down. They pray, one of my favorite things is to be in Jerusalem and I'll go down sometimes, we'd always go with someone or go with people, and we'll go down sometimes at 1 o'clock at night to the Wailing Wall, and it'll be filled 24 hours a day. It never stops, prayers.
And just like natural Israel, we are to be a prayerful people. They're prepared too. Even the young teenagers, at the age of 18, all of them go into the military, male, female and, all of them go. And you will see beautiful Israeli girls and handsome young men who look just like our teenagers look, except they're in uniforms and they're carrying M16s and AR9s, and they have their weapon. All day long they're prepared. Everybody is a soldier in Israel. Nobody is on vacation right now. They're calling up all ages right now, and this is your wakeup call. Are you ready? 'Cause when that trumpet sounds in Australia, in South Africa, in India, in South America, in Europe, wherever you're watching this, in the moment, in the twinkling of an eye, we shall be changed. Whoo! Hallelujah.
Don't you feel the witness to that? Can we give God great praise in this place? And I believe the Lord's wanting you to get ready, so pray this prayer with me. Everybody, pray it out loud with them in the studio audience. And those of you watching by television or watching online, open up your heart right where you are, say:
Jesus, I believe in you. I believe you were born of a virgin. I believe you lived a sinless life. You carried my sin to the cross. You bled. You suffered for me. You have me on your mind. And I thank you. You rose from the dead so that I could have eternal life. Life after death. I have it because Jesus has secured it. I will never die, I'll just change locations. And Lord, I believe, and I receive your forgiveness, your love, your mercy. I don't deserve it, but I receive it by faith, in Jesus' mighty name, amen and amen.