Antioch, Apostolic Sending and Setting - Part 14

enjoyment-oriented Christianity to the sacrificial kind of thing for which God waits. I hope that's a long-term thing, but I understand your ache and your desire. You know, the whole Church has got to play second fiddle to Israel. There's a way in which the Church has taken for itself a role and a function more than and other than what God intends. The Church needs to see itself with regard to Israel as an interim provision after their fall so as eventually to bring them back to the tree from which they have been broken off by the example and the jealousy to which the Church moves it. That the Church is called to a priestly coming under Israel and being a factor in Israel's restoration, which is not too far from the picture of a wife called to come under a husband to bring about his restoration, because I've seen any number of gifted women who are enjoying ministry and blessing others, but I wonder if they would be willing to sacrifice that privilege and enjoyment and trust God for its expression through the husband, seeing they are called to be one life in him, and more than just a compatibility of two ministries under one roof. There's one life, one ministry, and if we will be willing for the submission and surrender of our own use, I wonder if God will then allow us to see it be expressed to the husband and that we will be so identified with him as the one life that it will be as thoroughly gratifying as if we ourselves have been performing it. So, that is dying. That is dying, and I'm wondering if God himself has not given to women certain gifts and certain abilities, not they should relish and function in it, but to relinquish it. Yes, it's impressive and a blessing, but it's not yours to enjoy or to perform, but to relinquish and surrender so that it might find expression in the head of the body who is the husband. That's a radical proposition, and I have to say I have not seen too many examples of women willing. Thanks. Anyone else? We'll take... Yes, please. Last night you spoke about the coming calamity to Israel. You quoted Isaiah 51 to 53 as a double fulfillment, but during the time of Isaiah and Jeremiah when Israel and Judah were conquered by Assyria and Babylon, wouldn't that be fulfilled during this time? Good. That's a quandary that always comes up in the examination of prophetic scripture because there's a pattern that runs through the whole of Israel's history. Sin, judgment, expulsion, exile, return. So, how do we know that we're speaking of yet another and future expulsion and exile or that the scriptures are not describing something already passed? Isn't it interesting, but that the subject of Israel rightly understood compels us to be more earnest students of scripture than we would otherwise have been and to read the scriptures intently and to see what is disclosed in the entire context of what we are examining. So, for example, last night quoting from Isaiah 51, lie down that we may walk over you. And so they lay down and made themselves a road for the enemy to tread upon them, which I interpret as something future because it seems to speak so much of this vitriolic hatred of Israel and the Jew that is characteristic of Islam and will not be requited or satisfied except with their humiliation. Am I taking a prophetic liberty and giving it this interpretation or am I functioning in an office given for the purpose of interpretation? So, one way to understand it is, what is the truth of the prophetic calling of the man giving a particular interpretation to prophecies pertaining to Israel? Why do I see Ezekiel 37, the Valley of Dry Bones, not as the statement of the Nazi time, but as the statement of yes, something future? Not only because something in my spirit, but the text itself indicates that its future because a key verse that must take place before the Son of Man is commanded to prophesy to the bones is the acknowledgment of Israel itself that we are cut off, we are without hope, we are as dry bones. That confession has never yet been made by Israel, even in the Nazi Holocaust. You say, weren't they dry bones? Yes, but what was the statement, what was the national ethos coming out of that time? Not we are cut off, not a statement of absolute...