Wednesday, November 22, 2006

The Wolf Shall Lie Down with the Lamb

World Magazine did an article on Rock of Israel congregation in Philadelphia. They highlighted how this outreach to Jews is boiling over to Gentiles, including Muslims from former-Soviet areas.

Pay special attention to the use of Isaiah 11 in this article. Many teachers over the years viewed it as a prophecy regarding Jew and Gentile living together in peace, in the Messiah. I think this article wonderfully illustrates this by showing the reality of the promise.
Ilya Lizorkin had to shift gears. He started a worship service for Russian Jews, and Muslims showed up. Of course, he didn't start the thing at all but Jesus did, and His Spirit blows where it wills. Men of understanding let it blow and step out of the way.
...
I got to hear Andrei from Odessa on electric bass. I broke bread with a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn named Lauren at the home of her Kyrgyzstan friends Ulan and Mira, whom she led to the Lord—after her own conversion by a cabby in New York. Our being all together reminded me somehow of the wall hanging I had spotted in Ilya's office:

"The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them" (Isaiah 11:6).

Hundreds of years ago, Matthew Henry wrote:
Unity or concord, which is intimated in these figurative promises, that even the wolf shall dwell peaceably with the lamb; men of the most fierce and furious dispositions, who used to bite and devour all about them, shall have their temper so strangely altered by the efficacy of the gospel and grace of Christ that they shall live in love even with the weakest and such as formerly they would have made an easy prey of. So far shall the sheep be from hurting one another, as sometimes they have done (Ezek. xxxiv. 20, 21), that even the wolves shall agree with them. Christ, who is our peace, came to slay all enmities and to settle lasting friendships among his followers, particularly between Jews and Gentiles: when multitudes of both, being converted to the faith of Christ, united in one sheep-fold, then the wolf and the lamb dwelt together; the wolf did not so much as threaten the lamb, nor was the lamb afraid of the wolf.

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Jackie Mason Loses Court Case Against Jews for Jesus