Israel's Living Temple

The Lord is already building His prophesied temple in Israel
and the Dome of the Rock poses no hindrance whatsoever to His building!

That may be a surprising statement to many Christian supporters of Israel who for many years have enthusiastically followed and even supported the preparations of certain rabbinic groups in Israel who seek to build a Third Temple on the site where the Islamic Dome of the Rock now stands. That is not the temple that holds the Lord's attention in Israel! His heart is for an entirely different temple that is currently 'under construction'!

The temple in Israel that God is building through His Son Yeshua (Jesus) is a spiritual temple--a temple that is made of "living stones" who are His body and His witnesses in the Land. Today there are around 7,000 Jewish believers in Israel, their congregations and house groups meet throughout the length and breadth of the land. Each week brings reports of new believers coming to the faith in Israel. This is the prophesied temple that the Lord is building in the Land! Their existence in the land after 2,000 years is the greatest testimony of God's faithfulness to His people Israel.

Christians--even Israel supporting Christians--are mostly ignorant of the existence and the significance of the Lord's body in Israel. This ought not to be the case. Christian support of Israel should be first to the household of faith. That is not what has been happening. How that must grieve the heart of God.

This site is about and dedicated to the very real existence and presence of the body of Christ in Israel—Jews who know and follow Israel’s Messiah, in the modern nation of the biblical Holy Land. This site is about them and their labors in a field that is ripe for harvest. It is dedicated to declaring to the Church that there is something far more important going on in God's power for Israel than the raising up of a temple made of mere wood and stone.

What is a temple that human beings seek to build compared to the Israeli temple that God is raising up through the revealing of His Son? Will our focus as Christians remain engrossed with the activities of the unbelieving religious community of Israel at the expense of the Israeli body of Messiah that is being supernaturally built by God? Do we suppose that God's heart is set on the details of restoring a physical temple rather than the restoration body of believers in the Land?

There is a bumper sticker produced in Israel for tourists that reads, "ISRAEL IS REAL." That is the message of this web site as well. Israel is real. It is not a bible story or a museum of ancient holy things. It is a land of real people whom the heart of the Lord longs to restore in relationship through His Son. The Church has a part to play in that restoration. It is a part that cannot be fulfilled outside of recognition and support of the household of faith in Israel.

Israelprayer.com is about Israelis: Jews who have met their Messiah and Arab Christians living in either Israel-controlled areas or Palestinian-controlled areas. This site is about how God is moving now in real lives that are being changed even in the harsh realities of the epicenter of the strongest spiritual warfare on the earth.

It is time for the worldwide Christian community to awaken to Israel as something more than the setting of ancient biblical accounts and characters. Jesus is again walking in the midst of His people Israel. He is again revealing Himself to doubters and sinners throughout the Land. He is again performing miraculous acts of salvation, deliverance and healing of hearts, minds and bodies in the land of Israel. He is just doing it through His body, His servants who are laying down their lives to minister and proclaim the good news of Israel’s Messiah in the land of His brethren of the flesh.

This is not a Christian Zionist web site. It is not a site focued on Judaica. We support Israel whole heartedly but with understanding that New Testament precedent places the body of Messiah as the top priority for Christian support of Israel. We value the reconnection of Christians to the Jewish roots of the faith, but the Father desires more than fascination with all things Jewish to be fostered in Christians! God is seeking to awaken the true bonds of love and unity between Jew and Gentile in the Messiah.

Christians are related by our faith to the body of Messiah in Israel. When we consider Israel, it is the body first and foremost that should capture our attention. Everyone and everything else in Israel is secondary to the believers in Yeshua who are harvesting the ripening fields in Israel.

IsraelPrayer.com casts our ‘lot’ with the household of faith in Israel and seek here to make the Church aware of not only their existence and significance, but also to our Christian “duty” (as the apostle Paul termed it), to minister to their material needs. What that means is investing in their ministries and allowing them to be the distributors of blessings that Christians worldwide are bestowing on the unsaved nation of Israel. Allowing the indigenous ministries to do the work of the ministry!

God’s heart is still toward people. It is the people of Israel that He would have us turn our eyes upon, especially those thousands in the land of Israel who intimately know His Son. Far more important to the Lord than all the antiquities and relics, far more significant to the worldwide body of Christ than all the shrines and ancient churches of the Holy Land are the people Jesus called, "the least of these My brethren."

Perhaps your theological perspective has not had a place for the half million Jews worldwide who have come to know Yeshua as the Messiah of Israel in the past one hundred years. Perhaps your denominational stance on Israel has not included the emergence of seven thousand Jewish believers in Israel in our generation. Perhaps your eschatology has not factored in the revival of the faith of Yeshua of Nazareth currently going on in seventy Israeli Messianic Jewish congregations. What will you do with the discovery of these realities?

This may be an even tougher question for those Christians who are staunch supporters of Israel. Will you take your eyes off of the rabbinic religious establishment of Israel and rest them upon Christ's body in the Land? Will you be able to face up to the realization that the very religious groups of Israel so often appearing on Christian television who are reaping the Lion's share of financial support from Israel-supporting Christians are in fact the persecutors of the household of faith, the believers in Yeshua in Israel?

For those who desire to know more about the Israeli body of Messiah and how the Church is called to support their ministries among Israelis, this site is being developed to bring that information to you. IsraelPrayer.com is a site that will be under constant development in the months to come as we seek to include contact information and resources from the entire body of Messiah in Israel.

 

--Donna Diorio
September 2004