SHEMA!
Adar
1/Adar 2 5768
March 2008
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MA CHADASH? WHAT’S NEW?
Hebrew Classes
We are offering a 14-week
Hebrew class for beginners on Saturdays, beginning
March 1 and ending May 31. The classes start at
9:15 a.m. and end at 10:15 a.m. The cost for the
course is $100.00 for those who are not part of
the synagogue. Children 10 years old and older
can take the course. There will be a 50 percent
discount for each additional member of a family
who registers for the course. To register, make
your check payable to “Congregation Shema Yisrael”
and indicate that it is for the Hebrew class.
Please include your name, address, phone number
and email address.
Purim
On Saturday, March 22,
we will celebrate Purim (the holiday celebrating
the salvation of the Jewish people in the time
of Mordecai and Esther), followed by an Oneg.
Please bring food to share, especially Hamentashen
to compete for the coveted Golden Hamentashen
Award. Children may dress up in costumes related
to the story of Esther. Those who are Shema regulars,
plan on arriving early to help with set up and
staying late to help with clean up.
Passover Seders
Passover is one of the most meaningful holidays, and this
year we are hosting two seders: Saturday, April
19, and Sunday, April 20, at Bloomfield Hills
Baptist Church. The time for each seder is 6:00
to 9:00 p.m. Seating will begin at 5:30 p.m. The
menu includes chicken matza-ball soup; salad;
apple-cranberry chicken breast; roasted potatoes;
steamed vegetable medley; fresh-fruit plate; mixed
Passover desserts; coffee and tea. Tickets are
$20.00 for adults and $10.00 for children age
7 and under. We don’t have infant seats and the
evening is too long for very young children. Along
with your check, please indicate which night or
nights you want to attend, and how many adults
and children for whom you are reserving places.
Please include your phone number and email address
with your reservation. A confirmation letter
will be sent to you. We will not be accepting
any reservations after April 10.
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TODAH RABAH! THANKS VERY MUCH!
Giving shows our appreciation to the Lord. When we are
invited to the home of a friend, we reciprocate
by bringing a gift to show our appreciation for
his hospitality and graciousness. Moses commanded
us: Three times a year all your men must appear
before the Lord your God at the place He will
choose: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the
Feast of Weeks and the Feast of Tabernacles. No
man should appear before the Lord empty-handed.
In ancient times, the Lord manifested His presence
in His Special House in Jerusalem in a unique
way. When going up to Jerusalem, it was proper
to bring gifts for the Lord with us. Hasn’t God
been so good to us? He has invited us into His
presence, into His throne room, into His very
heart! We are joined to Messiah who is in the
heart of God! We have entered into God’s Kingdom
and the New Jerusalem. We are grateful for those
of you who have shown your love and appreciation
for the Lord by bringing your gifts to us. Todah
rabah! May the God who lives in Jerusalem bless
you!
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ISRAEL’S FINAL GREAT SALVATION
PART ONE
For life to make sense and for us to have meaningful
lives - lives that will endure beyond this life
- we need to know where we came from and where
we are going. Starting with Genesis, the divinely
inspired book of origins, and ending with the
book of Revelation, the book focusing on the final
things, the Special Writings of Israel alone of
all the world’s religious books tell us exactly
what we need to know. One of the parts of the
Word of God that has much detailed information
about where we are going is found in Zechariah
12-14. It begins this way: This is the word
of the Lord concerning Israel. The focus of
this revelation, like the focus of many of the
prophecies of the Last Days, is our nation - the
nation of Israel. As Messianic believers, we want
to know everything that the Lord has revealed
about Israel, because we are part of Israel and
because the future of Israel will impact the entire
world. Therefore, since the prophecies affect
everyone, it’s the responsibility of all Believers
- Jewish and Gentile - to know and understand
them.
This message is the Word
of Adonai, the Yud Hay Vav Hay, the great I Am,
the Eternal God who alone has life and being inherent
within Himself. But it is coming through a very
special human being, Zechariah, one of the last
of a very special group of human beings - the
Jewish prophets. During the 4,000 years of Israel’s
history, there have been only a very few select
individuals to whom the Lord chose to speak in
a very clear way, who would then give the Word
of God to the rest of us. Zechariah, who lived
around 500 BC, is one of these special human beings.
He was a true prophet whose life and ministry
and writings have been tested and found to be
100-percent reliable, so this word is worthy of
our complete trust.
To reinforce the trustworthiness
of this great prophetic message, and so that we
know whose word this is and why it is reliable
and why it should be believed, Zechariah adds
the following information: The Lord, who stretches
out the heavens, who lays the foundation of the
Earth, and who forms the spirit of man within
him: The One Who Was, Who Is, And Who Is To
Come created the vast expanses of space and the
mighty sun and the beautiful silvery moon and
the planets and comets and the billions of far-flung
galaxies, with their trillions upon trillions
of stars (and He is so infinitely wise that He
knows each and every star by name!). Adonai, who
stretches out the heavens, made the vast reaches
of the universe and everything in them as easily
as a man stretches out a small tent in which to
spend the night! And in addition, the One Who
Is The Source Of Existence created this specially
designed planet that we live on, the 8,000-mile-in-diameter
massive Earth with its 260 billion cubic miles
of matter. He laid the foundation of the Earth.
And the One Who Will Be Who He Will Be made the
subtle, immaterial, inner part of mankind - our
spirit, the non-physical part of our being. The
Lord forms the spirit of man within him. The One
Who Alone Has The Right To Say “I Am” is the infinitely
powerful and wise Creator of everything that exists
- from the vast expanses of the mind-bogglingly
huge universe, to the core of the massive Earth,
to the subtle and living and self-aware spirit
of human beings.
Do you remember the old commercials with the slogan:
“When E.F. Hutton speaks, people listen”? A representative
from that financial firm would identify himself
to someone in a crowded room, and right before
he said something, everyone got suddenly quiet
so they could overhear the important and valuable
words that the person representing E.F. Hutton
was about to say. It is smart to listen to powerful
and informed people who have valuable information,
especially when they speak about their plans for
the future. It makes sense to listen to powerful
human beings who are dispensing valuable information
that benefits their listeners; and it is foolish
and harmful to ignore what they have to say. It
is even wiser to listen to the One who stretches
out the heavens, who lays the foundation of the
Earth, and who forms the spirit of man within
him, who has all this wisdom and power, and who
is revealing to us His prophetic plans about Israel
and the nations in a crucial period of history
that affects the future of the world!
Here is what the All Powerful,
All Wise Creator God - who is in control of every
force in the universe and who is the sovereign
Lord over human history - says He will do in the
Achareet HaYameem - the Last Days: I am going
to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding
peoples reeling. At the end of this age -
the time that immediately precedes the return
of our wonderful King and Savior and Messiah to
planet Earth - the Lord’s plan is not to make
peace for Israel in the Middle East, but trouble
and difficulty and increasing amounts of pressure
that will result in the greatest war in human
history. That is what is going to happen, and
that is what we should expect.
Why will the Lord bring
us under increasing amounts of pressure? Why will
the fires of anti-Semitism burn their hottest?
Why will the nations of the world turn against
us and attempt to destroy us? Because the Lord
hates us? No. It’s the exact opposite. We need
this pressure to bring us to the place where we
need to get to in order for the salvation of our
nation and the subsequent blessing of the world
to be accomplished. For centuries the Jewish people
have been disobedient to the Lord. We have broken
our covenants with Him, including the Sinai Covenant
and the Messiah Covenant, the New Covenant. Our
people did not recognize the day of our visitation,
when the eternal Son of God humbled Himself, left
the honor and glories and powers He had in Heaven,
and came to Earth and became a man. He came to
His own, but the majority of His own didn’t recognize
Him or receive Him, but tragically rejected and
crucified Him. Our people have, as a result, been
exiled among the nations for 2,000 years, where
life has been for the most part very difficult
and often painful. Yet, in spite of our blindness
and sin, we Jewish people will be graciously restored
to our special Land and to our special city, Jerusalem.
And, Zechariah and other prophets make it crystal
clear that we will be there in the Last Days prior
to the return of King Messiah. But this partial
regathering of the Jewish people to our ancient
land that God repeatedly promised to give to us
forever as part of an everlasting, unbreakable
covenant (the Abrahamic covenant - see Psalm 105:8-15)
will not be appreciated by the surrounding peoples.
They will not be supportive of partially regathered
Israel.
The hostility that our people have been experiencing
for decades from the surrounding peoples should
not come as a surprise to us. We were forewarned
by the Lord 2,500 years ago that they would not
welcome us back home with: “We are glad to have
you back home! Barucheem haba-eem - welcome back
holy people to your holy land and holy city that
the holy God of Israel reserved for you and for
no one else! And because we fear the God of Israel
and we understand His sovereign plan for your
very special nation, we want to help you return
and reestablish your land and cities! And may
the God of Israel bless us as we bless you according
to the promise in His Word”! Instead, they will
react to this divinely ordained and orchestrated
regathering with irrational hatred. They will
be like the man who drinks too much alcohol and
becomes unstable and irrational, reeling and stumbling
and saying and doing crazy things and making a
fool of himself.
It won’t be only our capital
city of Jerusalem that will be hated and attacked
by the irrational peoples who surround us: Judah
will be besieged as well as Jerusalem. The
enemies who surround us will want more than a
Jew-free Jerusalem to control. They will be intent
on destroying the entire regathered nation in
all of our cities and land. The long tried, many-times-attempted
destruction of the Chosen People in the Holy Land
will be their goal.
The Supreme Being, who self-exists, informs us that
this Last Days, Israel-centered struggle will
spread beyond the Middle East. On that day,
when all the nations of the Earth are gathered
against her ... The irrational hatred and
senseless behavior of the surrounding peoples
over regathered Israel will draw the whole world
into this end-of-days conflict. Since the tower
of Babel, many human beings have longed for the
reunification of divided humanity, for the peoples
and nations of the world to unite and work together
as one. Well, the unification of the fractured
nations will finally take place in the Last Days,
but one of the goals of this coming together will
be to destroy the partially regathered Jewish
nation! The gathered-together nations will attempt
the final destruction of little Israel.
Right now, there are about 5.5 million Jewish people
in Israel and approximately 6.6 billion people
in the world. The Jewish people in Israel are
less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the world’s
population. For every Jewish person in Israel,
there are 1,200 Gentiles in the world. If the
Lord returns fairly soon, and the ratio of Jews
to Gentiles stays relatively the same, our little
nation will be facing what may be the biggest
mismatch and the greatest odds against a nation
in the history of warfare.
What will little Israel
be able to do against the combined forces of a
united world? On our own, depending on ourselves,
our resources, our strength, our intelligence,
our weapons, we couldn’t do enough to survive.
But, because it is the gracious plan of the Almighty
and All-Gracious God to save our nation, with
His saving help we will be able to do enough!
First, He will make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the
surrounding peoples reeling. After that has had
the desired effect and drawn the united nations
into the final battle, it is the Lord’s predetermined
plan to supernaturally strengthen and empower
the Jewish nation to enable us to stand firm against
the onslaught of a God-despising, Jew-hating,
Bible-rejecting, truth-suppressing world. On
that day, when all the nations of the Earth are
gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an
immovable rock for all the nations. The Almighty
will make us like a solid rock that is rooted
deep within the Earth. No matter how hard the
nations try to move us out of our God-given, oath-sworn,
unconditional-covenant-provided holy land, they
will be unable to do so! And just as a man, if
he keeps on pushing and pushing harder and harder
against a rock that can’t be moved, eventually
hurts himself, so will any nation, any army, any
coalition of armies that tries to destroy Israel
or move the Jewish people out of our Creator-willed,
God-ordained place. All who try to move it
will injure themselves.
Then the Lord, who prefers to save by the few, rather
than by the many, so that He is glorified and
not puny, weak human beings - the One who is supremely
worthy of our praise and who does not want sinful
creatures who are prone to pride, who have a deluded
and self-destructive independent attitude toward
the One who is the Source of Life and Blessing
to think that they are the source of saving power
- the Lord will intervene in our most desperate
moment, with the united nations of the world invading
us, intent on destroying us.
To be continued, Lord willing,
next month.
Shalom!
Rabbi Loren
SHEMA!
(Hear!)
is the newsletter of
Congregation Shema Yisrael
P.O. Box 804 Southfield MI 48037
Phone: 248-593-5150
Email: Shema777@aol.com
Website: www.shema.com
Services: Saturday 10:30 a.m.
Wednesday 7:00 p.m.
at the facilities of Bloomfield Hills Baptist
Church
3600 Telegraph Road in Bloomfield Hills
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