A Call to Repentance - 34

INTRODUCTION TO WEEK THIRTY-FOUR

This week, we continue to press in during WEEK THIRTY-FOUR of our 40 Weeks of Prayer and Fasting, to offer prayers of repentance for the sin in the church, the sin in the nation, and the blessing of Israel.

We now address these areas:

1. SIN IN THE CHURCH: ANTISEMITISM

2. SIN IN THE NATION: SEX-TRAFFICKING

3. PRAYERS FOR ISRAEL: THE ELECTIONS

REPENTANCE FOR SIN IN THE CHURCH:

ANTISEMITISM

"How Long, O Lord, How Long?" (Psalm 89:46)

[The topic of antisemitism, and how this hatred has been embedded in the Christian church over the centuries, is a complex, difficult and painful subject to address. In our own brief Calls to Repentance, we can only provide a small "snapshot" of this huge problem. Our purpose in the following three weeks will be to offer prayers of repentance for the sin of antisemitism in the church; the doctrine of dividing the land of Israel; and the false doctrine of Replacement Theology. In each case, we will provide links which will allow you to study these issues in more depth.

We begin tonight by giving an excerpt from an article, written by Australian author Luana Fabri, titled: "Antisemitism in Church History." To read this article in its entirety, go here.]

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Hitler's antisemitism did not operate in a vacuum. Neither did the response of the German people. Hitler simply made the most of an already existing anti- Jewish theology which had been deeply rooted in the people of Europe for sixteen centuries. This theology had become a norm of most Christian societies (whether they realized it or not), which during the Nazi regime produced in them, no response at all.

In Daniel Goldhagen's book, "Hitler's Willing Executioners - ordinary Germans and the Holocaust", he sets out to show that Hitler did not create German hatred toward Jews, but merely marshalled the existing hatred. German hatred of Jews was centuries old when Hitler came to power, especially after World War I, where Jews were vilified as the personification of evil, the agent of the Devil, the enemy of the people and the ruination of the beloved Fatherland. Goldhagen says: "For hundreds of years, antisemitism had lent coherence and esteem to the self-image of the Christian world; as many of the old certitudes about the world eroded in nineteenth century Germany, the centrality of antisemitism as a model of cultural coherence and eventually as a politically ideology, grew tremendously. . . "

The evidence that so many ordinary people did accept the absurd beliefs about Jews that Hitler articulated in Mein Kampf is overwhelming. The acceptance of these beliefs made ordinary people become willing executioners. But was Mein Kampf any different to Martin Luther's "The Jews and their Lies"? Or the sermons of John Chrysostom? Was Eichman simply obeying orders any differently than the Inquisitor Torquemada of Spain in the fifteenth century? Was the brutality of Hitler's henchmen and willing executioners any more brutal than those who carried out the orders of the Church in the Middle Ages, where Jews were murdered because of the same accusations but with a different motivation? And finally, why did the Church speak out when Hitler was ridding the Aryan race of the physically and mentally disabled, but not when he began exterminating Jews?

With the spread of Christianity, anti-Semitism became embedded into Western culture and became a cultural phenomena. The events of the Holocaust have many parallels in the Christian church. In the early fourth century the church began to 'protect' themselves from the Jews. They imposed laws that prevented Jews from 'contaminating the life and faith of true believers. The Nazis imposed similar restrictions by forbidding non Jews from shopping in stores owned by a Jew. In the seventh century the Church ordered the Talmud be burned; the Nazis held public burnings of all literature by Jewish authors. The Church disqualified the Jews from holding public office; the Nazis did the same. Until 1870 much of Europe had Ghettos designed to shut the Jews away from humanity for centuries; the Nazi's did the same. In fact, every restriction imposed upon the Jews by the Nazis, short of the monstrous 'final solution', had an earlier counterpart in cannon law. As late as 1941, Archbishop Grober, in a pastoral letter filled with antisemitic utterances, blamed the Jews for the death of Jesus, saying that the Holocaust was "the self- imposed curse of the Jews - 'His blood be upon us and our children' - has come true. . . today." (Jerusalem Post, International Edition Dec. 5, 1992)

Even though the Church had never before suggested killing all of the Jews, the Nazi 'final solution' was a logical extension of the thought of those church fathers and councils who declared God was finished with the Jews. The seeds of sixteen centuries of theological antisemitism would no doubt continue to produce fruit. And fruit of the worst kind it did produce, with the lawful and willing slaughter of six million Jews just fifty years ago.

Regardless of emancipation and Jewish patriotism, and despite the overwhelming contributions Jewish people made to the modern world, for as long as society continued to define the Jew as the "other in our midst" and for as long as there was a "Jewish Question", in due time antisemitism's third characteristic was defined in full fury, in what has come to be known as the tremendum : it said to the Jew, "You have no right to live."

Prayer of repentance:

"Father God, as we bring this grievous sin before You, we consider the plumbline that goes back to the foundation of our faith: Zion. Holy God, God of Mercy, we come to You now in humble repentance, for we are grieved that the Christian church has perpetrated crimes over the centuries against Your people - the very people that brought us our Savior, Jesus Christ. We ask You to forgive us for this sin, which deeply grieves Your own heart, and to help us to start anew in learning to love and to reach out to our Jewish friends in America, and around the world.

Father God, we stand in the gap for our brothers and sisters in Christ who harbor these thoughts within their own hearts, for they know not what they do. We ask You to intervene, to cancel any "fruit" that would spring forth from the wickedness of these hearts, and to teach us all Your ways . . . towards all men.

Father God, Yahweh . . . we ask all of this in the Name of Your Son and our Savior, Yeshua, Jesus Christ. Amen."

REPENTANCE FOR THE SINS OF THE NATION:

SEX TRAFFICKING (INCLUDING CHILDREN)

"Lifting the Curtain on Sex Trafficking"

An interview with Linda Smith, former member of Congress and Founder of Shared Hope International, a program to rescue and restore women and children in crisis.

(Source: Citizen Link, June 20, 2008)

To view the video of this interview, go here.

To visit the Shared Hope website, go here.

Ten years ago, Linda Smith founded Shared Hope International to rescue and restore women and children in crisis. The Department of Justice recently granted funding to Shared Hope to assess the sex trafficking industry in 10 U.S. cities.

Smith, a former congresswoman from Washington state, recently visited Focus on the Family and shared her passion.

1. Linda, you're combating global sex trafficking. Many people might be surprised to hear there are similar things happening right here in the United States. Tell us about the domestic problem we have with sex trafficking.

Sex trafficking is a multibillion-dollar industry. It needs a product, it needs a buyer, and somebody's all too happy to get a "product" and take it to market. And that's what we call the trafficker or pimp.

2. There is a lot of that happening with minors. What are you uncovering with regard to boys and girls being taken into this?

We're just about two-thirds through the investigation of major cities throughout the United States and the trafficking of children for commercial sex. What we're finding is shown by the story of a 12- year-old. She was snatched going to school. The man had been walking alongside of her as she went to school. Come along six months, he had built a relationship. She was a gifted, smart, little girl, and that's why she was walking the extra blocks to a special school. She got in the car with him and disappeared.

Once a child, kidnapped, lured, deceived, six magic words will control her: "I know where I got you." And those controlling words say, "I know how to get your mother. I can beat you again. There's no safe place in the world for you."

We just prosecuted the pimp. I'll go to the prison in a couple of weeks and interview him. He was part of a network selling girls (from) Louisiana to Toledo, clear over to Kansas, all the way to Seattle, and they had a pimp network of our little girls - just snatched and lured for "product" to men all over the United States (who) are pretty common, pretty ordinary, buying them because they're labeled "prostitute."

3. How does the American culture contribute to the problem of sex trafficking?

The American culture has started to tolerate commercial sex. "What happens here stays here" means thousands of little girls have been brought into Las Vegas, sold to tourists as well as local men. You don't find any of the buyers being arrested because, in the man's mind, she's a prostitute. In society's mind, she's a prostitute. The man is perceived as just using a prostitute, no matter what the age.

The age is going younger and younger, as men are visualizing something young. They're seeing young porn. They're seeing young bodies, no stretch marks. And when you come to actualization from visualization, that actualization has to replicate something similar. It's going younger and younger as porn is going younger. We found 1 out of 5 images online are of children.

4. Many people say that posing for porn or stripping is a choice a woman makes. Do you agree?

I've spent 10 years of my life restoring little girls and young women who have been in the commercial sex industry, and this is all over the world. I found one who made an "adult choice." The average age a child is put into commercial sex, around the world as well as here in the United States, is 11 to 14. So a 12-year-old is the common product. She's a child, she's innocent and she should be protected.

5. What can the average person do to help with the fight?

We have to change our language. We have to stop calling anyone a prostitute and call them a prostituted person, especially a prostituted child.

Be aware and become involved in your community. There are groups that fight what would be called child prostitution. We're asking you to call your prosecutors, call your sheriffs, and say, "Do we arrest girls, under 18, who are really traffic victims, and you're calling them prostitutes?"

PRAYER OF REPENTANCE:

El Shaddi, Lord God Almighty,

We, the church and those who are called by Your Name, stand before You guilty as declared for allowing sex trafficking of young girls and boys to enter into this nation and then actually promote its growth by turning our noses and eyes into other directions to avoid smelling and seeing the filthy truth that has taken residence in this land. Arouse us, O Lord, from our slumber and send us as a Christian army into the streets and commercial areas of the nation to find the perpetrators of this horrific trafficking and slavery. Empower those who have been in the battle for years and understand the power of the enemy. Help them to spread the truth about sex trafficking so that Americans will join in rooting out this societal illness; stir the church to join the battle without delay.

We, Your church, repent for our ignorant eyes and ears; we repent that we have allowed language to smother our sensibilities to this filthy practice. We repent also that we have not made our streets and schools safe for children to play in and gather in. Stir up our pastors to lead the fight. Help us to be the kind of people that You have destined us to be. In the precious Name of Jesus, we offer up our supplication. Amen.

· "But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea." (Matthew 18:6)

PRAYERS FOR ISRAEL:

THE ELECTIONS

We pray for the godly men and women whom God has ready to led this nation to be revealed and given their right places.

- Abba, give Israel a government through whom You can glorify Yourself.

- Abba, You made some precious promises to Israel regarding giving her righteous leaders when You returned her from exile. Therefore we remind You of these words and ask that You watch over and do them. For example:

- "I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning: afterward you shall be called, The city of righteousness, the faithful city." (Isaiah 1:26)

- "Turn, O backsliding children, says LORD; for I am married to you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion. I will give you pastors according to My heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding." (Jeremiah 3:14-15)

- "I will gather the remnant of My flock out of all countries where I have driven them, and will bring them again to their folds, and they shall be fruitful and increase. And I will set up shepherds over them which shall feed them, .says LORD." (Jeremiah 23:3-4)

- Lord, use the Kadima primaries to divide that party, resulting in the need for new national elections. "The house of the wicked shall be overthrown." (Proverbs 14:11)

(Source: Intercessors for Israel)

"WHY GOD USED D. L. MOODY"

A Semon by R. A. Torrey -- 1923

(5) HIS ENTIRE FREEDOM FROM THE LOVE OF MONEY

The fifth secret of D. L. Moody's continual power and usefulness was his entire freedom from the love of money. Mr. Moody might have been a wealthy man, but money had no charms for him. He loved to gather money for God's work; he refused to accumulate money for himself. He told me during the World's Fair that if he had taken, for himself, the royalties on the hymnbooks which he had published, they would have amounted, at that time, to a million dollars. But Mr. Moody refused to touch the money. He had a perfect right to take it, for he was responsible for the publication of the books and it was his money that went into the publication of the first of them.

Mr. Sankey had some hymns that he had taken with him to England and he wished to have them published. He went to a publisher (I think Morgan & Scott) and they declined to publish them, because, as they said, Philip Phillips had recently been over and published a hymnbook and it had not done well. However, Mr. Moody had a little money and he said that he would put it into the publication of these hymns in cheap form; and he did. The hymns had a most remarkable and unexpected sale; they were then published in book form and large profits accrued. The financial results were offered to Mr. Moody, but he refused to touch them. "But," it was urged on him, "the money belongs to you"; but he would not touch it.

Mr. Fleming H. Revell was at the time treasurer of the Chicago Avenue Church, commonly known as the Moody Tabernacle. Only the basement of this new church building had been completed, funds having been exhausted. Hearing of the hymnbook situation Mr. Revell suggested, in a letter to friends in London, that the money be given for completion of this building, and it was. Afterwards, so much money came in that it was given, by the committee into whose hands Mr. Moody put the matter, to various Christian enterprises.

In a certain city to which Mr. Moody went in the latter years of his life, and where I went with him, it was publicly announced that Mr. Moody would accept no money whatever for his services. Now, in point of fact, Mr. Moody was dependent, in a measure, upon what was given him at various services; but when this announcement was made, Mr. Moody said nothing, and left that city without a penny's compensation for the hard work he did there; and, I think, he paid his own hotel bill. And yet a minister in that very city came out with an article in a paper, which I read, in which he told a fairy tale of the financial demands that Mr. Moody made upon them, which story I knew personally to be absolutely untrue. Millions of dollars passed into Mr. Moody hands, but they passed through; they did not stick to his fingers.

This is the point at which many an evangelist makes shipwreck, and his great work comes to an untimely end. The love of money on the part of some evangelists has done more to discredit evangelistic work in our day, and to lay many an evangelist on the shelf, than almost any other cause.

While I was away on my recent tour I was told by one of the most reliable ministers in one of our eastern cities of a campaign conducted by one who has been greatly used in the past. (Do not imagine, for a moment, that I am speaking of Billy Sunday, for I am not; this same minister spoke in the highest terms of Mr. Sunday and of a campaign which he conducted in a city where this minister was a pastor.) This evangelist of whom I now speak came to a city for a united evangelistic campaign and was supported by fifty-three churches. The minister who told me about the matter was himself chairman of the Finance Committee.

The evangelist showed such a longing for money and so deliberately violated the agreement he had made before coming to the city and so insisted upon money being gathered for him in other ways than he had himself prescribed in the original contract, that this minister threatened to resign from the Finance Committee. He was, however, persuaded to remain to avoid a scandal. "As the total result of the three weeks' campaign there were only twenty-four clear decisions," said my friend; "and after it was over the ministers got together and by a vote with but one dissenting voice, they agreed to send a letter to this evangelist telling him frankly that they were done with him and with his methods of evangelism forever, and that they felt it their duty to warn other cities against him and his methods and the results of his work." Let us lay the lesson to our hearts and take warning in time.

To obtain a copy of this booklet, write to:

Sword of the Lord Publishers
P.O. Box 1099
Murfreesboro, TN 37133
USA

SPIRITUAL READINESS

By A.W. Tozer

"The end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer." (I Peter 4:7)

When the Bible says that God is calling a special people out of the nations to bear the name of His eternal Son, I believe it and His name is Jesus!

Our pious forefathers believed in spiritual preparation, and they said so. They saw themselves as a bride being prepared to meet the Bridegroom. They regarded this earth as the dressing room to outfit themselves for heaven.

The evangelical church has come through a period when nearly everyone has believed that there is just one prerequisite to readiness: being born again. We have made being born again almost like receiving a pass to a special event - when Jesus returns we whip out the pass to prove our readiness.

Frankly, I do not think it will be like that. I do not believe that all professed believers are automatically ready to meet the Lord. Our Savior Himself was joined by Peter and John and Paul in warning and pleading that we should live and watch and pray, so to be ready for Jesus' coming.

ZION MOURNS IN FEAR AND ANGUISH

"Zion said, The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me." (Isaiah 49:14)


Words:Jo­hann Heer­mann (1636)
Music: Jo­hann H. Schein (1623)

About the lyricist:<br>
Jo­hann Heer­mann was born in 1585, in Raudt­en, Si­ le­sia (now the Czech Republic). Heerman re­ceived the­o­log­ic­al train­ing as a re­sult of a vow his mo­ther made when he was ve­ry ill as a child. Af­ter or­din­a­tion, he taught at the un­i­ver­si­ty, but in 1607, had to stop af­ter he con­tract­ed an eye in­fect­ion. Four years la­ter, he be­came a dea­con, then the Lu­ther­an pas­tor, in Koe­ben. His min­is­try was in­ter­rupt­ed sev­er­ al times by the Thir­ty Years' War, but the faith­ful min­is­ ter re­sumed when­e­ver the fight­ing died down. In 1634, med­ic­al prob­lems forced him to stop preach­ing, and he fin­al­ly re­tired in 1638. Jo­hann Heer­mann died in 1647 in Poland.

ZION MOURNS IN FEAR AND ANGUISH

Zion mourns in fear and anguish,
Zion, city of our God.
"Ah," she says, "how sore I languish,
Bowed beneath the chast'ning rod!
For my God forsook me quite
And forgot my sorry plight
Mid these troubles now distressing,
Countless woes my soul oppressing.

"Zion, surely I do love thee,"
Thus to her the Savior saith,
"Tho' with many woes I prove thee
And thy soul is sad to death.
For My troth is pledged to thee;
Zion, thou art dear to Me.
Deep within My heart I've set thee,
That I never can forget thee.

"Let not Satan make thee craven;
He can threaten but not harm.
On My hands thy name is graven,
And thy shield is My strong arm.
How, then, could it ever be
I should not remember thee,
Fail to build thy walls, My city,
And look down on thee with pity?

"Ever shall Mine eyes behold thee;
On My bosom thou art laid.
Ever shall My love enfold thee;
Never shalt thou lack Mine aid.
Neither Satan, war, nor stress
Then shall mar thy happiness:
With this blessèd consolation
Be thou firm in tribulation."

(To read all the stanzas and hear the music of this powerful, ancient hymn, go here.)

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