Kashrut and Famine (~17.69 MB) - Moriel Ministries

Moriel Israel
Elon and Hadass Moreh
Elon and Hadass Moreh
Moriel Israel
Moriel office in Northern Israel
Dear friends and supporters,
We are now on the very brink of Summer,
it always come as a shock because the change
from pleasantly warm to hot and stuffy
happens very rapidly here. For those of you
who have been watching and praying for
this nation and ourselves, I am sure that you
will be delighted to know that some of your
prayers have been answered, and some very
significant things have happened recently.
Some National Blessings, The Rains.
We know that many of you have been
praying about this matter, and we are delighted
to say that winter rains were very
good indeed and the Galilee is nicely filled
for the first time in years; the shoreline has
even moved back towards where it used
to be. Considering that water levels have
been critically low for many years and had
dipped down almost to the point where the
water table could have been irreparably
damaged, this really is a major miracle, the
LORD has pulled it back from the brink.
The plentiful winter rains are a reminder
that God is a good god and makes his rain to
fall on the righteous and the wicked alike.
We are not a righteous nation, but God in
His goodness has blessed us.
The Gas begins to flow.
As those who read the Israeli media might
be aware, an enormous natural gas deposit
and large oil reserves were discovered off
Haifa a few years ago. The natural gas has
just begun to come on stream this year. This
again is God’s goodness and perfect timing;
the Arab ‘Winter’ chilled our relationship
with Egypt and gas supplies from there
have been frozen. However this new oil and
gas supply means that soon Israel could
Moriel Israel /June 2013
be energy-independent; very important
indeed in a world that increasingly see us
as a pariah state. This may be the LORD’s
provision for a time when the world may
impose restrictions or embargos upon us.
Justice for the Ortiz family.
Perhaps you might remember the story
of Ami Ortiz; the pastor’s son from Ariel
who was injured by a Purim parcel-bomb
intended for his father. We were not sorry
to hear on the news that Jack Teitel the
Yad L’Achim anti-missionary operative
who was behind this, several other violent
crimes, and a number of murders was sent
down for two life-sentences. There are
some ultra-orthodox who would have seen
Teitel as doing God’s work, thankfully the
sentencing judge did not see it that way.
Believers in this country will breath more
easily that this dangerous and evil man will
never be allowed to roam our streets again.
The wind of political change
A major development here is that after
our last elections; -for possibly the first
time in our state’s existence; the stranglehold
that the immensely corrupt religious
parties have held on our system of government
has finally been broken and they are
not part of the present governing coalition.
Whether this situation will persist long term
is not known yet, but at least for a while
they won’t be able to extort concessions
from the Government and leech massive
amounts of cash and privileges away to
their private interests. This has the potential
to be immensely significant, and could,
if the religious are kept out of power, eventually
amongst other things lead to an easing
of the difficulties that presently hinder
Messianic believers from making Aliyah.
Some brief news from us
Though quiet in other respects, we continue
to work with a number of others towards
rolling out what will be a major
outreach project. I had hoped to have more
to report on this by now, sometimes here
things don’t happen as fast as I would like;
but this is definitely going ahead.
I have volunteered some of my time each
week to helping out in a coffee-shop outreach
in a nearby Arab area. Coffee-house
culture is very strong here in Israel, it’s the
place to be if you want to sit down and have
a chat, so it’s a good place to make contacts
with people.
We are about to become grand-parents
any time now and Haddas has come down
with a severe case of baby-fever as the day
grows near. The primary symptom of this
ailment is a total inability to talk of anything
else but childbirth. Apparently this
condition, though probably incurable, can
be alleviated by contact with its point of
origin, so we are now abroad for a short
while to be around for the arrival of our
first grandchild and to see some family.
Here the LORD has worked another miracle,
our eldest daughter two years ago had
an ectoptic pregnancy. Unfortunately it was
misdiagnosed and the condition became
serious. After surgery she acquired a hospital-borne
infection (actually necrotising
fasciitis) which resulted in her having to be
opened up wholesale to clean out the mess
and then a month long stay in hospital. She
very nearly died and needed an ovary removed.
So this new grandchild to be is a
sign too of God’s grace.
An interesting taxi ride.
At this time of writing we are in Europe.
A few days ago we hired a cab. The taxi
driver who was defintely of non-European
origin asked us where we came from, ‘Israel’
we replied. “Oh’ he said, ‘I’m from
Egypt’. Thankfully he eased my instant apprehension
(filled with thoughts of being
attacked by a member of the Muslim Brotherhood
and how we could escape from a
moving vehicle), with; ‘That’s fantastic!
Someone who will understand me; I’m a
Copt, do you know what a Copt is?’ He
then proceeded to tell us about what conditions
are like for Coptic Christians in Egypt.
In one sense all that he said was only
a confirmation of what Moriel and others
have been saying for a long time. The only
people who are deceived, stupid or duplicitous
enough to go around proclaiming Islam
is a religion of peace and tolerance, are
those tho have never had to live under an
Islamic government.
During the rest of the journey we received
up close and personal testimony
of some of the horrors that Copts endure
in Egypt. This man though not born-again,
had enough discerment to see what many
Western Christians can not; that the Allah
of the Koran is not the God of the Bible,
that the essential nature of Islam is thoroughly
demonic and that Muslim atrocities
have nothing to do with poor conditions,
grievance over ‘Palestinian’ suffering or
any other like cause but everything to do
with the diabolical spirit behind Islam. If
you want to know about Islam ask a Copt.
Up until this time I had been totally unaware
that there were communities of Coptic
exiles in Europe. This was a real eyeopener,
and I felt that it was one of those
‘divine appointments’. At the very least it is
an encouragement to pray for these people,
that the LORD would visit them with his
salvation; but it also highlighted the terrible
betrayal of these people by those Western
christians and movements who have swept
this issue under the carpet in order to pursue
their agenda of hate-momgering against
Israel unfettered.
News from The Way; the Moriel
supported congregation in Karmiel
and a brief note on Internet
evangelism over here.
Nothing major to report this quarter but
since our last newsletter Kehilat HaDerekh
congregation has launched its new website.
It is still under development somewhat but
it’s looking good. You can view it at http://
www.kehilathaderech.org.
You may remember from our last newsletter
that Pastor Yossi reported that a number
of people had come to faith via their
congregational website. They are not the
only congregation that has experienced this
phenomenon. Our friends in the persecuted
congregation down in Arad have also seen
non-believers contacting them through
their web site which you can see at http://
hasdeyyeshua.com.
It is a sign of our times that many Israelis
are inquiring about the faith and coming
to believe in Yeshua via the medium
of the Internet. Internet take-up in Israeli
is extremely high and apart from the its
more unsavoury uses, the Net has become
a means for the Word of God to enter directly
into Israeli households. The Gospel
can visit inquiring Israelis in the privacy
and security of their own homes (or smartphone
for that matter) without interference
or harassment by the religious.
Unsurprisingly among many ultra-orthodox
groups (which are effectively cults)
the Internet is banned by their leadership.
This is not just to avoid the possible temptation
to view unwholesome material, but
also to prevent members of the these cult
groups accessing knowledge and teachings
from outside of which the leadership would
disapprove; this would particularly apply
to biblical and especially to Gospel material.
This phenomenon is not restricted to
hasidic cult groups, in many yeshivot (rabbinical
colleges) study of the Bible (except
through the filter of approved Rabbinic interpretations)
is discouraged, and the older
interpretive traditions regarding the Messiah
(which are often very close to NT teachings)
are censored or avoided.
A Hebrew conundrum: -the Saviour
who needs to be ‘saved’
Here in Israel sometimes issues arise that
probably would never come up in an English
believing environment; for example I
was discussing recently with a friend the
significance of Zechariah 9:9 and I thought
it might be of interest also to our readers:
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion;
shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold,
thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and
having salvation; lowly, and riding upon
an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.
My friend was translating an English
book into Hebrew, and its exposition of this
Messianic prophecy was heavily dependent
on the wording of the English bible
version being used. For this exact reason
my translator friend had hit a problem and
said something like this to me: ‘his whole
point depends upon where the English says
“having salvation;” but it doesn’t say that
in Hebrew.’ My friend was quite correct -
it doesn’t say that in Hebrew. The underlying
text in Hebrew is ‘uçcn’ (NoSha) and
is clearly a passive form of the verb ‘uçcy’
(YaSHa), from which we get the word
‘huwçcy’ Yeshuah ‘salvation’ and the name
‘uwçcy’ -Yeshua. Strictly speaking this verb
in the form it occurs in Zechariah 9:9 does
not quite mean ‘having salvation’ at all, but
‘saved’. The rendering ‘having salvation’
is a bit of a fudge. The English translators
did not want to render this passive verbal
form (in which the subject the recipient
of the action) as an active form -’saviour’,
for they did not want to misrepresent the
underlying Hebrew. On the other hand
they were uncomfortable with the idea
of a Messiah that needed ‘saving’; hence
they opted for something betwixt the two.
So we have a conundrum here; in English
we wouldn’t even notice this, it has been
‘lost in translation’, but in Hebrew it exists.
Consequently this is not the right verse
to use to demonstrate that the Messiah is
Saviour if you are speaking to Israelis.
All right, you might say; but if the Messiah
needs ‘saving’ wouldn’t this undermine
what Scripture teaches us about the
his sinlessness? This is where we hit another
problem, a form of one-dimensional
Christian thinking, which tends to always
think of ‘huwçcy’ ‘salvation’ only in terms of
‘salvation from sin’; however that is not its
primary usage in the Old Testament, where
it is more often seen in contexts of victory
over, or salvation from enemies or deliverance
from a bad situation. Now if we take
this information into account and start to
look at some other messianic passages we
can actually see that they support this idea
of the Messiah needing or receiving ‘salvation’
e.g. Psalms 21, 22, 118; Isa. 49:1-12;
Heb. 5:7 etc.
A very good example from these is psalm
22 particularly verse 19-21 where the same
verbal root is employed:
But be not thou far from me, O LORD:
O my strength, haste thee to help me. Deliver
my soul from the sword; my darling
from the power of the dog. Save me
(‘ynuycçoh’ from the same root ‘uçcy’) from
the lion’s mouth: for thou hast heard me
from the horns of the wild oxen.
In the Servant Song of Isaiah 49 we
see both ideas combined, the Messiah is
presented as both Saviour and a recipient
of salvation. He is presented as one
who raise up the tribes of Jacob, restores
the preserved of Israel, is the light of the
nations and the LORD’s salvation to the
end of of the earth. He is also described
as the One who is given for a covenant of
the people who would bring the prisoners
out of darkness; but in the very same
breath God says to the Messiah ‘in an
acceptable time I have heard thee and
in a day of salvation have I helped thee’.
If we look back to passage from Psalm
22 we see the same terms ‘salvation’ and
‘help’ occurring together also.
So putting it all together; the Gospels
show us that Zechariah 9:9 is speaking
24 Moriel Quarterly • June 2013 June 2013 • Moriel Quarterly 25