END TIME TRUTH: LATEST NEWS AND HORROR IN JERUSALEM

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

LATEST NEWS AND HORROR IN JERUSALEM

“The Lord your God will return you to the land that belonged to your ancestors, and you will possess that land again” (Dt. 30:5).

Greetings in Jesus’ Name!

This has been a very busy time for me, personally. I had just returned to Indiana from a 2,500 mile drive, where I spoke a number of times in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.

Then I returned to Ohio to speak for ten days.

It was there that we experienced an amazing outpouring of the Holy Spirit, both at Freedom Fellowship, in Apple Creek, and Gateway Church in Wooster. Urie Hershberger and Keith Smith are the two pastors. Those of you in the Ohio area might want to attend one of their services. The Lord directed me to do something that I have never done in fifty years of ministry. He clearly told me to speak about my pain on the Sunday morning at Urie’s church.

So for thirty minutes I talked about my pain, and then for the next thirty minutes I taught from Isaiah 55. Little did I know what was going to take place.

After the message quite a few people prophesied and spoke directly to me. Then pastor Urie invited anyone who wanted prayer to come forward.

The next thing that took place was beyond amazing. The first group to stream to the altar were the young people. They were kneeling, crying, and some of them were on the floor.

Then the adults began streaming forward, too.

For the next hour and a half I laid hands on weeping people who were broken and hungry. During that time I invited all the young people who had come forward to surround the adults, lay hands on them, and help me pray for each individual.

I had spoken for an hour---but we prayed for an hour and a half!
incredible pictures of idf soldiers

There is no way to convey in a letter like this how glorious it was. But Isaiah 55:5 sums it up best: “I have made you glorious!”

On my drive home all I could do after the ten days was to praise Him and thank Him for what He had allowed me to experience.

It was common back in the 1960’s and early 1970’s to be in meetings like this in the United States. In the last 50 years I have made about 150 trips abroad to preach the gospel. And it was “normal” to see these things in other nations.

But . . . to see it again in my own country was very, very encouraging. Maybe God is not finished with America yet!

Jewish sages tell us that in every Bible passage there are at least 70 deeper levels of understanding. And the more I study God’s Word the more I am convinced that only God could have written the Bible.

Here are just a few examples:

At the top of this letter I have posted Deuteronomy 30:5. This part of the Bible was written 3,459 years ago!

Most of us know that on May 14, 1948 Israel became a nation. This is on the calendar we use. But on the Hebrew calendar it was the year 5708.

It just so happens that Dt. 30:5 is the 5,708^th verse of the Bible!

“The Lord your God will return you to the land that belonged to your ancestors, and you will possess that land again” (Dt. 30:5).

If this does not ring your bell, then you don’t have a bell to ring. “ . . . my heart stands in awe of your Word” (Ps. 119:161).

While I was speaking in Ohio and teaching this truth a 14-year-old girl interrupted me and exclaimed, “I’ve got the shivers!”

I will never forget what she said because it just goes to show that when we really, really realize that God wrote the Bible it does something very powerful within us. It is one thing to know it with your brain, but when you know it in your emotions, it affects you on a much deeper level.

Another wonderful truth I discovered recently and taught in Ohio was the passage in John 21, where the disciples caught “153” fish.

For most of my life, whenever I read this passage I secretly wondered why it mentioned exactly 153. Normally we would say something like, “We caught about 150 fish.”

Why does the text say exactly 153?

Well . . . for one thing, in order for them to say this, they had to count them. Whoever counted the fish (there were seven men in the boat) must have got the “shivers”, too.

You might ask, “Why would they get the “shivers” because there were 153 fish?
incredible pictures of idf soldiers

They were all Jewish. They all grew up knowing gematria, just like we know the ABCs. They knew that 153 meant “Ha Pesach”—The Passover! Our Mighty God directed this exact number of fish into the net!

And it was Passover week. The "man" on the shore who had told them to cast their net on the other side of the boat after they had fished all night and caught nothing . . . was none other than the Lamb of God (The Passover Lamb), our Lord Jesus, who had just risen from the dead.

No wonder Peter put on his clothes and then jumped in the lake!

There is another number in the Bible (found in Genesis 14:14) that I have been curious about, too. It is the number 318!

Why would God bother to tell us the exact number of men Abram took with him when he went to rescue Lot, north of Damascus?

It turns out that Eliezer was “the steward of Abram’s house” (Ge. 15:2). When you look up the word “Eliezer”, which means “God is Help”—אֱלִיעֶזֶר—you discover that the gematria for his name is the number 318!

This is another one of those amazing things that strengthens our faith when we see God placing wondrous things in the Bible. And it makes us stand back in amazement, knowing that only the God of the universe could have written the Scriptures.

Romans 10:17—“So then, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.”

If we want our faith to grow, then we must spend time reading the Bible.

The great preacher, D.L. Moody wrote this: “I prayed and prayed for more faith, but faith did not seem to come. Then, one day I read Romans 10:17 and discovered that faith comes by hearing the Word of God. I have been reading my Bible and my faith has been growing ever since.”

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I want to express my sincere thanks to Wendell and Daisy Martin, John and Helen Miller, Pete and Katie Stauffer, Keith and Mia Smith, and Urie and Amanda Hershberger for hosting me while I was in Ohio.

May God richly bless you once again for helping us to take the gospel to a lost and suffering world. More than 100 hours of our messages are on FLC’s website, Blog, Youtube, and Vimeo. And there are 88 nations listening to our teachings . . . all FREE! This seems incredible to me, but it is a fact. May God do amazing things in your life, too.

In His Service,

Wesley Smith
P.S. This should give you the "shivers", too. Chapters were not placed in the Bible until 1227 A.D.
Verses were placed in the Bible in 1550 A.D., respectively: Stephen Langton and Robert Estienne. God does watch over His Word!

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