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May 15, 2005 6 Iyar, 5765
Dear Praying Friends and Tentpegs*,
Worlds have moved since we last wrote. What once might have been is now history. An extraordinary era in our life has come to an amazing conclusion. The cloud that was over the Tabernacle in Tel Aviv has moved. The word of the Lord was made sure towards the end of our worship time on Tuesday April 19th. At almost the same moment, our whole team sensed the Lord indicating that our time in Esther House had come to a close. After months of prayer, in an instant, the matter went from absolutely silent to absolutely spoken. There was no doubt that it was finished.
Incredible things happen when God speaks. As His Word came to us, we were taken out beyond our own desires and thoughts. Even as our minds were set to reject the thought that it was time to pack up our tent, our hearts received it by the spirit. We can sense and see the Lord at work. Wisdom says that it is too soon to try to delineate much, but just to put one foot in front of the other and trust a good, wise, and loving God. We are pressed into identification with Abraham, the father of all those called to “cross over” (which is the root meaning of “Hebrew”). Though he had a promise to receive the Land, he waited for the city with foundations whose builder and maker is God...for here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come.” (Heb 11:10, 13:14) This alabaster box has been broken. To walk into that room was to step out of one world into another. There was a precious fragrance dwelling in the Tabernacle. The longing within us is for the fragrance that was there to be so on us that we would be recognized as tabernacles of the eternal God in the midst of a corrupt and wicked world.
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Though outwardly our situation has changed, our calling and vision remains as it was in the beginning. God still desires a dedicated place for His Presence in the region of the inheritance of the tribe of Dan; we still have the burden to reach out to the lost and seeking Israeli youth . . . more than ever; we remain clear that the ministry of Emmaus Way is to be a community-based team living with our hearts set on pilgrimage. We have also been directed by the Lord to go out into the Land to encourage other worship ministries that have been raised up by the Spirit. And He has directed us to take what we have received and learned here out to the nations.
The inheritance of Dan extends to about half way between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Personally we would all love to be out in the foothills. From a practical financial standpoint, and as relating to spiritual atmosphere, being in a more rural setting has many benefits. The next resting place of the Tabernacle will likely be more in the order of a tent in a field than a building in the city. After a few days rest, we will begin searching for the next place the Lord has prepared for us. So we appeal to you who are beloved friends and supporters. Please don’t leave us now. Though we are moving, our work is not finished. During this time of transition we need your prayers and support more than ever.
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Well over a year ago, the Lord began calling us to get our roots out of the temporal world. Many prophetic voices agree that very soon a day is coming when strong ties to earthly things will become liabilities and deadly weights. We need first to be set free in the attitude of our hearts and then from our valued material possessions. When hard reality hits, as it did us, there is grace to acclimate to the dictates of the moment. However, we sense the Spirit calling out a forerunner people who will already be divested and free when the hour comes. At one point I asked the Lord how it was that this shift came as such a surprise. He said that what we related to as being fruit -- the Worship Center -- was also a seed, and as such had to die in order to release the full multiplication He desired.
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As the monster task approached, the physical logistics of packing, moving, and storing equipment and furnishings from 1000 meters of space (almost 10,000 square feet) caused us to fluctuate between daunted and paralyzed. But praise the Lord...deliverance came through our dear friends in Tubingen, Germany who sent a team of six to help us. Within seven days, except for the Tabernacle itself, everything was in storage. Also, in one phone call, the Lord provided a truck and two storage containers at an incredibly low price. The move went off without a hitch. We could never thank our friends enough for their help and could not have done it without them. It is such a testimony of the unity of the Body, and it spoke loudly to our pre-believing Israeli friends of the reality of the kingdom of God.
There have been many testimonies of God’s hand throughout the process. One in particular took our breath away. Last Wednesday was the day we had set aside to pack up the Tabernacle. It began early as movers came to take the grand piano to be “baby sat” in a worship house near Beersheba. In the Tabernacle was a communion table on which we placed a candle that burned for about 60 hours. As it would get near the bottom, we would light another. In the year or so since we began doing this the light of each candle has essentially never gone out until it was finished. But within minutes after the movers came in, if not when they entered, the candle went out by itself! We felt the Spirit lift. How the Lord has helped us. How He has prepared the way. How He has confirmed the course, leading us on and going with us.
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Getting through packing, moving, and storing everything has been a miraculous crossing. But there are other “Red Seas” before us with swirling waters we must yet pass through. No sooner than we have crossed one, we find ourselves at the edge of another. Each is unique in the way it stretches and tries us. It’s like wartime. Rest comes when it comes for however long it lasts. Please pray that we will find the shortest route, that our strength will not fail, that our faith will stand strong, and that our vision will be clear. Pray especially for Heather and Shimshon as they are about to give birth to their first child any day, and for each team member. As encouraged as we are, it is a blazing furnace.
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We cannot close this letter without asking you to pray for the people and the State of Israel. Tens of thousands are about to be torn from their homes. This is far more than a physical relocation. It’s more like what befell Job than what was asked of Abraham. In former times, when God brought expulsion and calamity on Israel, it was by the hand of foreign enemies. This time it is by our own hand...brother against brother. Those once lauded as pioneers and heroes are now looked upon by proponents of the “disengagement” as enemies of the State. Our greatest fear is that this inner rift will give legal right for the spirit of anti-Semitism to rise to as it did in the 1930’s. If this is true, and we believe it is, nothing will be able to stop it. We ourselves will have opened the door to our enemies...which we have actually done in the natural. The kingdom of darkness will seek to capitalize on the opportunity and take our actions as giving them the right to do to us what we have done to ourselves. Brethren, we call on you to stand in the gap on behalf of the Land. Judgment is coming. But if we cry for mercy to be shown to God’s portion Israel, such mercy will be there for us in our time. As we treat the least of these, His brethren, so the Lord will treat us.
One way or the other, after these days, Israel and the world will never be the same. There is neither reason nor an acceptable explanation for what is happening. The enemy, in his subtlety, has raised up issues that keep us from clearly discerning the heart of the matter. A blindness and hardness has fallen over our leaders like what God declared in Isaiah chapter six. We believe this is a prophetic picture of what is about to come on the whole world. It is first to the Jew and then to the nations. Human agendas and fleshly passions will rise up in a flash. Men will about-face on long-held positions and sworn principles in an instant. The time of the suddenlies is not coming. It is here. All over the world the Lord is repositioning His Body. In this light, we understand all the more God’s current leading of Emmaus Way. We are to be a worship-based community ministering to the Lord and a place of salvation, refuge and healing for the lost.
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We are so grateful for all of you who have stood with us in prayer, support, and heart during this time, even though we haven’t written in awhile. We can tell we are being prayed for! May God bless you from Zion!
Your servants... For the Glory of His Name,
Arni and Yonit |