In this episode of What the Prophets Say, join us as we discuss wars, Israel and the
sin of taking sides. Yes, you heard it. We're going there in this episode of What the Prophets
Say.
Hello loyal listeners and welcome once again to another rip-roaring episode of What the
Prophets Say with me, Emma Stark and my sidekick.
Sam Robertson.
How are you Sam?
Yes, I'm great.
We've just actually been looking at Sam's wedding list because it's not very long to
the big day. We do record this ahead of time. I don't know when you will hear this. You
might be married by the time people hear this. We might seem very out of time, but we're
looking at the fact that you nearly have a complete crockery set and the importance of
that. Some people deliberately like mismatched.
Oh no, that confuses me.
What?
It not confuses me, it bothers me.
It bothers your sense of order.
I like matching things.
Do you know what? I don't like drinking from mugs that have a chip in them.
Yeah, I know I'm the same or a slight crack.
Well I was told, you see, I don't know whether this is a lie and it's a shame this isn't
lies because you, from such intelligent audiences, somebody would know that actually you get
incredibly dangerous germs in any chip or crack on any piece of crockery. And then of
course if your lips touch it to drink your coffee, you could get a deadly disease. Do
you think I've been lied to? That seems very, when I say I lied, like a very teenager-y
hyped up conversation I must've had, but I've thought it for years.
Maybe you weren't lied to, but maybe in your prophetic drama type sense of self you've
made it into, maybe it was like you could potentially get a mark on your lip and it's
become a deadly disease. As happens mostly with prophets and stories.
Things are very intense. You know with prophets it's either black or white. There's no sage
of gray or perhaps or moderation about it. It's because we have to steward the voice
of God and he is holy. Prophets are made to be a little bit extreme.
Yes. Yes. Either all amazing or all absolutely disastrous.
This is true. I was preaching in England at Shire this weekend and I'm running around,
literally running around because you know the way I like to preach by, I don't like
to stand on a platform. I like to be down walking in between the people. People are
utterly terrified of that because there's no sense of like that preacher is one step
removed and I find myself in somebody's face, like literally inches from their face saying,
what would you think if God told you to be Hosea and marry a prostitute? And the person
had no idea what the polite response was. Yes, I'll be obedient to the voice of God
or no, no, no, that's horrific. Then I thought maybe I was too personally in their space.
Anyway, yes, but in the moment when you're stewarding revelation and you're getting excited
about it or you're getting inspired, you don't really know what's going on. And then you
do look back and you think, wow, I was bold. I do think I would like to do a step count
of a set if they weren't so ugly. Yeah. Or calorie burners to wear one of those during
ministry because literally I feel like I run circles around rooms when I preach. I couldn't
see you wearing a fit, but no, they're not very beautiful. Someone needs to invent a
beautiful looking step counter. One that looks like jewelry and then you would wear it. Yes.
But I don't like digital clocks. I find them irritating. Yeah. No, I get that. I do get
that. Yes. I prefer a proper wristwatch. You do like a wristwatch. I do. So we say something
wildly more interesting and spiritual. Do you run around? You're not as running around
day depends where I am. What's the most running you've ever done while preaching? I would
say I run, but I move. I have literally done a full lap round to congregation to make a
spiritual point in high heels and been out of breath and looked and had my makeup fall
off my face with sweat. I've never had that issue. You'll be glad to know. Okay. Let's
talk about war. Let's talk about war. The season of war and the season of war. Okay.
My friends now hold onto your hats, seatbelt yourself in. We are going to try to create
some biblical thoughts here. Uh, categories of three things. What is the difference between
spiritual warfare? Number one, spiritual warfare. Number two, ugly manmade warfare where it's
all about man's instincts, man's violence, man's dreadfulness versus category number
three, when God permits or allows war on the earth. And when we come into a war season,
we can't just go, there's going to be wars and rumors of war. We need to know, okay,
that's what Jesus says in the latter chapters of Matthew's gospel. Well, what are the possibilities
and how do we think around the differences between when God permits something or instigate
something, when man instigate something, manmade warfare or the spiritual warfare, which we
should all be doing anyway. So we've got our three categories. Are we ready? Do you want
to kick us off? Which, which category do you want to start with Sam Robertson? Well, I
think as well, the reason we're having this conversation is we're acknowledging that we've
actually been in peace time for quite a long period of time in the earth. And yes, there
have been pockets of disaster or wars or whatever, but on the whole, especially in the Western
world, peace time has been our portion and we have learned how to think, how to interact,
how to behave, how to steward things like finances and relationships and peace time.
And actually we are not in those days anymore and it requires my goodness, the most monumental
of mindset shifts and our listeners, I bet you, you know, we've, we're all there. How
on earth am I meant to think right now? Actually, how am I meant to think? How am I meant to
pray? And so to go that way, we want to understand the three different types or categories of
war that there is, that we can understand, I guess, what wars are right in terms of what
level as they're one that is right. And how do we partake or what is our responsibility?
The first being man war initiated by man. Let's go there first manmade man initiated
man, God's nowhere near it. And Satan's fairly close to it because it's a man ordained man
and anything that's manmade a man constructed and has no breath of God on it is going to
have Satan close by. So let's look at that and let's go straight back to scripture.
When war is first seen in the heavens or the earth, it is in Revelation 12. And this is
before before we are on planet earth and it says this, Revelation 12 verse 7, then war
broke out in heaven. And so this is God is in the heavenly realms. He's got his archangels
in place and war broke out in heaven and Michael, the good angel, the warfaring angel, the archangel
Michael and his angels. I'm reading to you now from Revelation 12 fought against the
dragon and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he, we're talking about Lucifer
and I, Satan was not strong enough and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon
was hurled down that ancient snake called the devil or Satan who leads the whole world
astray. He was hurled to the earth and his angels with him. So I've just read to you
Revelation 12 verse 7 to 9. And so we understand that the first war we ever see comes from
the heart of Satan. And so when God is not involved and when God is not in the picture,
we have to say that war manmade and inspired by Satan here is about ego, about getting
your way. It's often about genocide and a certain sort of victory that you will go for
at any costs. There's nothing redemptive in it. There's nothing of the consequences of
sin in it. It is ugly, ugly manmade. Satan speaking in the background. It is about pain,
domination and my rights, my ego is about this ugly sense of going beyond anything that
would be reasonable into destruction. We can list the categories of Satan who leads man
in this way and you can start to see the ugliness of war on the earth that is manmade and Satan
breathed that starts to be about death numbers, about destroying people groups. And this sense
of I must have victory at any cost. There is nothing of negotiation, diplomacy. There's
nothing of a conversation about peace of reconciliation of seeing value in another. There is only
this sense of we will protect ourselves to a level that is about me destroying somebody
else.
It's about not just a victory, but a conquering of another people, person, group, nation or
boundary to place. I think as well and manmade wars are very often about amassing great power
and God is severe against those who seek to amass great power. Time and time again in
scripture he judges people who seek to amass power and wealth for themselves. And so anything
that is about an invasion to amass power or to acquire power or to acquire something just
to prop up self is a war that starts in the camp of Satan and Satan is power hungry and
he is always seeking for himself more power because he knows his power is diminishing.
More land, more wealth, more people, more agreement, whatever it might be. That's empire
really isn't it? Which is empire, the ugliness of empire. And I think that empire spirit
we see manifesting in war and though it may not be as strident as some of the empires
we have know about in our history, there is an empire type mindset that as we must conquer,
invade, own, amass, grow our possessions, our wealth, our power.
And I think war is complex and I don't want to make it too simplistic, but we understand
that in how we even after the second world war divided up some of the land and the territory
actually created the subjugation of people, we landlocked some countries and the sense
then that you get wars of retaliation to things that are years old because it came from places
where we did not think about blessing or the value of another people group or another tribe
on the earth, how they are valuable before God, that we became suspicious, racist, over-protectionist
in our approach. And so sometimes it looks like wars spring up from nowhere, but actually
we have long understood that man is not kind, man is not often about blessing one another,
man is left at his own devices, wrapped in original sin that takes man without God into
this leadership place where Satan is dominant and you then circle back round to retribution,
retaliation and vengeance and nothing of the kingdom of God, which is why you get often
within war the worst of man whispered to by Satan, which is very, very bloodthirsty. And
I would always look at wars and look at the genocidal tendencies where they want to annihilate,
we look a lot at the anti-Semitic tendencies in war, but that's not the only anti-people
group that we see. We have a lot of war in the Balkans, in Somalia at the moment, where
the genocide is very much their vengeful, man-made, bloodthirsty war. And in that war,
how do we pray? Because I think when we look at man-made war and then spiritual warfare
and then things that God is allowing to happen, we almost always must know what is the response
in prayer. And for me, when you see the ugliness of the man-made vengeance and death and the
justification of death of the innocence, you have always for me looking at Luke chapter
1 verse 17. And Luke chapter 1 verse 17, I'm just turning to it in my Bible here in front
of me, is the portion where a heart has gone astray and you are asking the heart to turn
and man-made warfare is a heart gone wrong, a heart of vengeance and retribution. And
so you are then praying, I have it here in front of me, Luke 1 verse 17, and he will
go on before the Lord in the spirit and the power of Elijah, here's the key bit, to turn
the hearts, to turn the hearts of the parents, the children, and here it is, to turn the
hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous to make a people prepared for
the Lord. And so here we are praying, God, when hearts are bloodthirsty, when hearts
want vengeance and genocide and have no tempering and no limits to what they do, we pray for
the heart to turn from disobedience to the way the kingdom of God does things to the
wisdom of righteousness.
Now we understand that when war happens, the first thing that is the place the enemy seeks
is the heart. And for our listeners, you'll have heard us some episodes ago talk about
the Matthew 24 scriptures and where it talks about the rumors of war, but how there is
this offense that turns to betrayal, that turns to hatred, that turns to false prophets.
And that is tucked into the scripture where Jesus says there's going to be wars and rumors
of wars. And so the heart, I think in wartime, and here's key for your own self as well,
I think in wartime, your heart is more critical and more exposed than in other peace times.
And so for you personally, for me personally, you've got to be good at measuring and checking
your heart because in wartime, it is more vulnerable than in peace time. But you also
then have to start in your prayers with addressing the hearts of those involved in war. And so
don't just go straight to their actions, go to their hearts. May there be a seed that
gets planted in their hearts that enables them to turn to Christ and turn to each other.
May there be a seed of reconciliation, of love, of compassion, planted in their hearts.
That is a prayer for you. If you're wanting top tips on how to pray, take that, write
it down, pray for their hearts, plant in their hearts, seeds of reconciliation and compassion.
I think then when we look at the spiritual warfare portion, it could not be more opposite
to what we have just discussed in every single way. So now we're in Ephesians and we're in
Ephesians and let's turn to it together in Ephesians chapter six. And it talks about
our wrestle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and
spiritual wickedness. Do you have it there in front of you? You guys will know this very
well. So we're in Ephesians six, we're in the last chapter of Ephesians now and we're
in verse 12 for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against rulers. We would
say principalities and powers depending on your translation, but against the rulers,
against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual
forces of evil where in the heavenly realms, very powerful verse in Ephesians six verse
12. In other words, what this verse is saying is get your eyes off everything that is manmade.
Now we've just described manmade warfare, but this is saying get your eyes off everything
that is manmade and spiritual warfare begins in the heavenly realms. Now let me be very
clear by what that means. We are not therefore looking at manmade boundaries of nations,
the modern nation state, political groups, political parties, national boundaries, anything
that is a manmade structure. You do not look at as your first point in spiritual warfare.
You are in the heavenly realms. Spiritual warfare is a wrestle for the kingdom of God
against the kingdom of darkness. And that is at this point in scripture not linked into
man. It is linked into principalities and powers. And we are very loose with this scripture
and we too easily assign a principality or a demon to an earthly side. But the start
of spiritual warfare is that you look at the heavenly realms. In other words, spiritual
warfare, you go up high in the heavenlies and you say, what is the demon at work here?
Is it a demon of conflict or bloodthirstiness or hatred or anger or a sense of mauling or
a murder and you start to deal with the principalities and the powers in strategic spiritual warfare?
And you are therefore releasing, if you're not happy or trained in that sort of spiritual
warfare, you then release the substance of the kingdom of God, the atmosphere of the
kingdom of God, which is righteousness, peace and joy. And at that point, you are out of
political ideology. You are out of, I must protect this nation at any cost. And you are
into the protection of people of humanity by binding the demons that lead men into hatred
and releasing the ability for righteousness, peace and joy.
Absolutely. You cannot win a spiritual war with worldly weapons or worldly tactics. And
that is echoed again in two Corinthians where Paul says our weapons are not carnal, that
they are empowered with divine power to demolish strongholds. They are divine weapons, spiritual
weapons. So you go into the spirit, there you go. You have your, your, what is the demon?
And you're asking God, what is the spiritual weapon? Which if you don't know and you don't
have an answer, you're releasing the atmosphere of the kingdom of God. But there may be other
spiritual weapons as well that God says. And I want you to feel really empowered because
I think there is this sense of, I don't know, I've had a lot of people say to me recently,
I am reflecting the sentiment that they're not qualified to pray or to prophesy or to
know what to do in a season and the earth like today. Like I don't, I don't feel like
I can pray during war. What am I meant to say? What am I meant to do when we're in war
times and that actually God is saying, look, no, you can go into the spirit realm. You
can see the demon, but you can also see your weapons, which are spiritual. And I want you
to be doing this as your homework. What is the demon and what is, what are my weapons
in the spirit realm to help take this demon out? And Paul says here, you know, and he's
fighting against, well, he's being resisted by false apostles. There's a whole anti-Paul
move that's going on within that area. I mean, he's trying, he's being forced out essentially.
And he's saying, look, I don't, I don't fight them as they're fighting me. I'm not resisting
them as they're resisting me. I'm fighting a spirit with spiritual weapons and he's going
into the spirit realm to gain a decisive victory by the power of God. And so you are, and no
matter how well versed you are in prayer and warfare, you are more than able to go into
the spirit realm, see the enemy, see your weapons and apply them.
And so then you do expect that to that spiritual warfare to have a practical impact and to
be manifest on the earth because we begin by warring in the spirit and then we see a
practical application of it. The kingdom of God manifests on the earth in these, in days
of manmade ugly warfare where, where men have gone beyond anything that, that, that God
would back.
And so let me talk to you about Northern Ireland because that's where I grew up and I talked
about this on par hour before. Um, but it's worth saying that it came to the point where
we had buried so many dead. And although I grew up in, um, what would have been seen
as a traditionally unionist community and we would have very much seen the enemy as
the IRA and the Irish Republicans, it come, it came to the point where you understand
that violence perpetuates violence. And I think even though we were on a side by culture
and church attendance and upbringing, we understood as a family that I'm on a side, but I don't
think God is on either side. And that's a shocking realization that I'm on a side and
God is not. Absolutely. That is shocking. And I want to protect and I want to defend
and that is okay up to a point, but ultimately there was a sense that arose within particularly
my father that the way we were going to do this was not to shoot every member of the
IRA or to destroy every Catholic who ever walked the face of the shores of Ireland,
that that was not going to be, that would be genocide. And that if God was not on the
side of the Protestants and God was not on the side of the Catholics and that it was
not a God just war that, you know, once you'd resolved all of that, that we were just in
ugly man war, we only had one option and that was this, turn the other cheek. Wow, wow,
wow. Come on. And therefore you're standing at graves with all of the pain of an open
grave and you're burying the dead and you are still hearing bombs go off and you are
still watching and there's no ceasefire. There was no ceasefire, but we decided and my dad
would have led the charge on this. Do not retaliate this death. Do not seek manmade
justice. God will do this over time and that the greatest form of justice that we can bring
to a community is peace for our children. And the greatest thing we can do is have,
have murder and war as a memory, not a current reality. And somebody has to be brave enough
to say, I don't want vengeance for this situation. Yeah. And maybe that's why God says vengeance
is main because he knows that in our fallenness and in our humanity, man will always have
a propensity to apply vengeance in the wrong way or to have ego motivations or whatever
equal equal I for an I motivation and the in vengeance and in the outworking of it.
I mean for, for what you said there, you people saying God's not on a side. Well, that's what
he says in, in, in Joshua chapter five, just before the fall of Jericho, which is a war.
But he says, look, you know, he turns up, there's this Christophany, a theophany and
appearance of God and flesh, not an incarnation, but an appearance of God as an encounter to
Joshua and Joshua's first question is whose side are you on? Are you for us or for our
enemies? And God says, neither, none. Don't apply me to a side. Don't put me who is uncreated
and apply me to a side of something that is created. And God, God is above that. I think
it's not so much even as well that we see we don't take sides or we're not on a side.
I think that the reality is because we're humans, we will always have a motivation for
a side. We will, we do. We all, but we have to recognize that and then come up and above,
come up and above it and see it as God sees it. Ask God the intelligent questions rather
than just expecting that God is going to reinforce your own side taking.
I think that we understood in those days the need to protect ourselves. That was understood
and particularly to, to understand that our family was a target back then and the IRA
were sending my father death threats and we did have police protection as a family unit
back in those days. There was no doubt about that. So we, we weren't rash with the understanding
of protection. We chose a certain approach to what we defined as defending ourselves.
We did job to protect ourselves from future harm. But defending ourselves in terms of
wanting vengeance and an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we did not do that. We
put safeguards in place to minimize harm, but we went forward to say the only way this
stops is if I'm the first to stop it. And that is what the Bible would say, turn the
other cheek. And I don't know that we understand that unless we're quite highly skilled negotiators
that we never said, oh, the IRA must disarm or the IRA must change their objectives. Nobody
demanded that because that is stripping a people of some of their identity. But you
can't expect that to happen overnight, but you can go on a kingdom journey or you say,
I start by turning the other cheek. And the first thing is we're going to make peace.
United are the peacemakers because God is not on a side. I would go as far as to say
that in the Ukraine, Russia war, I would say the same thing as I would say about Northern
Ireland and Catholics and brothers. I'm not so sure God is on any side. I think we assign
God a side and a political backing or a country in error and that God is saying, come on guys,
what I want is mature spiritual warfare that understand people have value and that you
are praying that the hearts would turn to find me in man's sin and blood thirstiness
would be my personal take on that.
Absolutely. And the call to contend for peace and war for it as a restoration and an outworking
of what happens in hearts. And I think this look, this deeply exposes our tendencies as
humanity. And I think when you see war, I mean, it's just vicious to see and it's terrifying
to see if we're honest reading about it, you almost can become accidentally numb when there's
so many news notifications all of the time that it's easy to either become disengaged
or really, really rattled. And I think that is why we need one another to haul each other
into what is God saying? What is God doing? And what is my duty and my responsibility
here? I think as well, when you are seeing weapons and of great destruction and you're
seeing world weapons, worldly weapons, you have to be even more intentional to remind
yourself always that my weapons are spiritual and spiritual weapons. Aren't just the prayers.
I think spiritual weapons are a conversation that is subversive to the narrative that is
going on and conversation that changes the story line or puts a different story in the
atmosphere. And we've got to be really careful, I think on social media, we've got to be careful
in our commenting. We've got to be careful in our posting that we are not accidentally
backing a world weapon, but we are going into the spirit first.
So it was saying, Sam, that you and I are slightly down a road that might be called
pacifism. I would say no, we are not. And this is why, and this is the third category
when God allows war. And this is perhaps the most challenging of the three areas to talk
about the man, the man made more of genocide and bloodthirsty and the desire for victory
above everything is easy to define. Spiritual warfare is actually fairly straightforward
to define. We just happen to not like it because we like victory more than we like people and
reconciliation. And that's the pain here. We like victory above everything else. Let's
talk about when God allies and Thomas Aquinas, the great, um, I don't know theologian of
hundreds of years ago coined the phrase a just war. Now I don't like that phrase. Um,
my husband and my father would not like that phrase. We don't believe there is any such
thing as a just war. Thomas Aquinas was wrestling a concept there to try to put onto scripture
a kind of a catchall that sometimes God is one who allows war to happen and allows consequences
to to outwork. So if I was to define that, I wouldn't use the phrase just where I don't
like that concept because it makes murder and death seem like it's permitted and it's
somehow righteous. I don't actually think you can really justify that in scripture at
any point that war is somehow righteous. Um, so this concept of jihad, I would say it lead
to the Islamic community, the concept of a righteous war. I don't think that's a Christian
concept. What you do see in scripture is this. You see the holiness of God, which I don't
think we talk about enough fiery, purie, pure purity and holiness. And that when man rejects
Jesus as like the ultimate sin or man rejects the ways of God, um, or man, um, loves unrighteousness
and wickedness, God allows consequences to come. And most often we see that God allows
unrighteous nations to punish or bring consequences to almost equally unrighteous nations. So
I don't think you can ever say there's a righteous nation because the concept of a righteous
nation is very hard to cite biblically because a nation doesn't give its soul to Christ.
So only an individual does that. So you're looking at nations all with unrighteous tendencies
being permitted by God to cause consequences to be felt in other unrighteous nations in
the hope, I think in the mind of God that they turn and cry out for mercy and their
need is rediscovered of a savior and of the place of God and who he is. And I do think
that is majority of Lee, if not exclusively how you see war utilized in scripture as the
place where God says this is unrighteous and so I will allow some consequences where Christ
and the principles and values and the ways of Christ have been continually rejected.
And God says no, I need to judge and now I permit, I allow, I left my hand of protection
that there might be a finding of Jesus and a finding of the ways of Jesus.
Yes, yes. And so therefore I would want to push it. God may or may not have favorite
nations, that's a slightly different broadcast. It doesn't actually matter whether you perceive
your nation or that nation or a nation or another nation is covenanted to God. That
doesn't protect you from consequences. It doesn't matter how well worded your constitution
is and how brilliant in the inception of your nation there was a devotion to God. If that
nation whether you like the concept of nations covenanted or whether you like what was put
into your constitution as godly in orientation, if you have utterly rejected the person of
Jesus Christ, if you have loved wickedness, I don't actually think your history has a
get-out-of-jail card for free associated with it. And that takes us into 2 Kings 21 and
this is God talking about his own people and I'm going to read to you 2 Kings 21 verse
14. I will forsake, this is God speaking, I will forsake the remnant of my inheritance
and give them into the hands of enemies. They will be looted and plundered by all their
enemies verse 15. They have done evil in my eyes and have aroused my anger from the day
their ancestors came out of Egypt until this day. And so this sense of God saying, look,
you may well be my people, you may well be people that in the past have delighted my
heart but I ally even what looks like quite harsh consequences because we have no real
understanding of what the holiness God actually feels and looks like and the standard it needs
for us to live by the standard of holiness. And so when an empire gets too big for its
boots, when sin is great within a nation, God says, now here comes your consequences.
And I think you don't call that just war, you call that God permitted war where God
says, I'm going to ally some things, I'm going to even ally you to be provoked, I'm
going to ally you to overreact and I'm going to ally consequences to come to you. Why?
Because you have rejected Jesus. And I think then we say, not God is on a side. I don't
think we ever say God is on a side, whether it's God allied, whether it's a manmade,
we just, that's not, you know, something that we like here. But I think we understand that
God says, I will ally you to be wounded and to be deeply, deeply in pain because I would
rather you find my son as your savior.
Yeah, we can't think that covenant means that we can bypass the consequence of sin, whether
that is both personally or for a people group or a nation state, sin always has consequences.
And so how do you pray? Well, we know that if sin is exposed and there is a consequence
of it, what matters is a repentance and a return to Christ. What matters is a recognition
that Jesus is Lord. And so your decree is a memory we said, you know, for the manmade
war, you know, the hearts turned to one another. I think in this space, your decree as may
they find Jesus, may they find Jesus, their hearts turned to Jesus. It's a harvest prayer.
It's a harvest prayer. And I don't know if I could say harvest. If harvest comes, if
people find Jesus, then they expedite the process. You know, the war is shortened, whatever
it might be. But I do think that the condition or the degree, the level of the war can, can
in some way be helped by those who turn to Jesus and find Jesus and the recognition of
Jesus because ultimately harvest is what matters. And you've got to start to pray for souls.
You've got to start to pray for salvation. You've got to start to pray for hearts. That
is your duty right now. It is not to pray for armies or militaries or anything like
that and amassing great power. I mean, those who are involved in war, you pray for their
hearts, but it's people and hearts, people and hearts always that they find each other
and that they find Jesus. Can we just mention Israel? And now you do need to listen very
carefully to how I choose my words here. I think most of the, the spirit filled born
again church would say that they were pro Israel and, and we are to here. We love Israel.
We are pro Israel. Does that mean that God has shut his eyes to anything that she ever
does? No, it doesn't. And that actually my pro Israel, my love of Israel, I would prefer
to put it like that. My love and my passion for Israel means that I can get on board with
God shaking her out of love to find a savior. I can get on board with some things not going
her way if they find their savior and that if those people who live in Israel are stubborn
and hard hearted and consistently reject Jesus Christ as savior and Lord, you can expect
them to be shaken. You can expect some things to happen on their soil that is not great,
but that applies to every single nation in the world. And that place of, I want to pray
not just that, Oh, you win and somebody else's genocide. No, no, no, no, no. I want to pray
for every nation in the world that they come to find their savior. So I do think that we
are entering the days where we will see some unfortunate things happen to Israel that God
is saying, look, this is consequence territory. It's consequence that you still won't find
Jesus as Messiah. And that is true all the way through scripture that God is probably
most determined in his pursuit of Israel over every other nation because he loves Israel.
He loves every nation, but he loves Israel. It has a place in his heart because his son
is a Jewish son. But this place then within the Jewish people where he says sometimes
and mainly through scripture, I deal with you very firmly because you will not acknowledge
the standard of holiness that is required. You won't turn from your sins. You won't
go after Jesus. And so I think we have to say in those situations when God allows bad
things to happen or when God allows consequences and that becomes in the form of war that we
are not ever to be fighting, saying I'm on this side and God's on this side. And so when
it was on this side, no, no, no, no, we're saying God, we're on the side of harvest
and we're on the side of hearts that turn and we're on the side of whatever you need
to do to turn a nation around to find you. And we are not football hooligans who chant
the name of a side. And like immature children, we say God, we get behind what you are doing
as King. We are only ever, only ever on the side of the kingdom of God that works its
way out sometimes in the most painful way so that Jesus is hailed as King and acknowledged
and submitted to. And that is very difficult. Did we just, did we just go there? So I just
think we need to become a little bit more biblical literate.
And you need to have, like we all have opinions and emotions about this matter. You've got
to choose your space that you have the conversation and, and you know, our listeners, we'll have
triggered some of you will have provoked some of you. Some of you will be going, I don't
agree. Others of you will be going, yes, I do. Look, may this provoke in you good conversations.
And I would say, let, if you've been triggered, if you've been provoked, if you're thinking,
I don't know how I feel about this, that is fine. That is how good choices are made. If
you come into the space of healthy dialogue and this don't form your opinions by yourself.
I mean, these opinions that we have formed and these beliefs that we have formed have
been over weeks and months of private wrestling and phone calls and conversations and changing
our opinion and changing our views time and time again. And the same can be for you. And,
but I would say, don't feel unqualified to pray. I would say, if you are unsure what
to pray, don't pray your opinion, but pray hearts, find each other, find Jesus. There's
your decree. I think God is not a God of destruction. He's not a God of death. He's not a God of
chaos. And he's not a God of genocide. And wherever we see bloodthirstiness, I do think
we are beholden to, to go into the spirit realm and to say in the name of Jesus, that
spirit is not allowed to operate. And, and usually in war, that's on both sides of the
agenda. Wow. So I want to bless you guys as you listen to this to become those who stretch
into spiritual warfare expertise. You must go on that journey and you must be those who
know what it is to see what's going on in the spirit before you do anything else. And
you are always blessed when you are making peace and you are always blessed when you
leave vengeance to God and your form of justice is a peace contention so that children do
not grow up in the ravages of genocide. So interesting days in how we think and we pray.
We're finding ourselves too shallow, aren't we? And we're finding ourselves too partisan
and we're finding ourselves not backing the kingdom of God and backing nation states rather
than the kingdom of God. So I bless you to mull this over and go on a journey. Thank
you for listening to us. We will see you again for another episode very soon of What The
Prophets Say. Bye.
Thank you for listening to this episode of What The Prophets Say with me, Emma Stark.
If you would like to go deeper with us, you would be very welcome to join our network,
the Global Prophetic Alliance. You can find that at propheticscots.com where we have a
comprehensive training program to lead you into deeper realms of the Spirit of God and
encounter. If you feel a call in the Pool to Deliverance ministry, you can download my
latest e-course which is a comprehensive overview of getting people free from demonic oppression.
You'll find that at demonbusting.com. Join us on these different platforms for more interaction
with Emma Stark, Sam Robertson and the GPA team.