“Therefore behold, I am going to make them know—this time I will make them know My power and My might; and they shall know that My Name is Yahweh.” (Jeremiah 16: 21)
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Yahweh wants our attention. Will we give it to Him?
In a JerusalemConnection Spot Report, Jim Hutchens asked this question: “Why does God give us such base leaders?” I agree with the premise of his question, but I have a slightly different take on the problem. Watch the video below for Jim’s perspective:
I think most of our leaders are perverted. I don’t believe Yahweh gave them to us. We wanted them, and Yahweh allowed us to have them the same way that He allowed Israel to have a king.
Right now, the moral foundation of our country is virtually nonexistent. It’s not just a problem in the White House. We have the same problem in Congress and the Supreme Court.
In other words, the problem affects all three branches of government, so checks and balances are failing us. Our system of government from top to bottom is screwed up royally.
I suspect that most SnyderTalk readers agree with me. A huge percentage of the general population doesn’t agree with me. They think that gross immorality is just fine. In fact, they love it.
Electing moral leaders is essential. It begins in the White House, but it doesn’t stop there. It extends to all levels of government and to the appointed positions that elected leaders fill.
Yahweh will allow us to go just so far before He drops the hammer. As a nation, I think we are perilously close to that point.
This is a personal example. It’s real. It took place in July 1970 in Athens, Georgia at the entrance to Oconee Hill Cemetery. I’m not including it as testimony or confession, but it may be some of both. You decide.
I had been wandering away from Yahweh for some time. You could even say that I was running away from Him like Jonah did. I was so far from Him at that moment that normal people never would have guessed that I was saved, but I was.
Finally, Yahweh had had enough of my willful disobedience. He wanted my complete attention, and He made sure that He got it. I was in the process of doing something that I shouldn’t have been doing, and Yahweh spoke to me.
The Messiah said, “My sheep hear My voice.” (John 10: 27) He meant it.
Yahweh speaks in many ways. Most of the time, He uses a low voice that’s so soft you need to be still and quiet to hear. Sometimes, it’s just a sense of knowing that comes over you.
This time Yahweh’s voice was loud. It wasn’t audible to the people who were with me, but it reverberated inside my body and shook my whole being. There was no mistaking it. I think He spoke to me that way because He had been whispering to me softly for some time, but I wasn’t listening.
Yahweh allows us to tune Him out. I had done that. As a nation, we are doing the same thing. The words “IN GOD WE TRUST” that appear on our currency are just gibberish. It sounds great, but it’s not true.
This is what Yahweh told me in 1970 word for word: “If you take one more step, you are dead.”
It was short and to the point. As I said, Yahweh wanted my attention, and He got it.
I stopped that instant, and I prevented the people who were with me from completing their mission. I think I saved their lives that night, but I don’t know for sure.
Yahweh allows us to do things that are diametrically opposed to Him and to do those things until we reach the point of no return. I was there. Thanks to Yahweh’s direct intervention, I turned around.
It’s called repentance. If I hadn’t repented on the spot, I wouldn’t be writing this.
When we drift away from Yahweh, we hurt innocent people unintentionally. I did that, but I didn’t know it until recently.
Fast forward 45 years. That seems like a lifetime, but to Yahweh, it’s just a blip.
In July 2015, almost 45 years to the day after Yahweh told me to stop or I would be toast (it may have been exactly 45 years to the day), Yahweh spoke to me again. This time, He used His still small voice, and He told me that I had hurt someone very badly, someone that I cared for a lot. The person I hurt wouldn’t know that I cared for her then, but I did.
Yahweh even allowed me to feel the pain that I inflicted on her. That was a real eye-opener. It helped me understand the point He was making.
My actions 45 years ago affected her life more than I knew, and the effects have been lasting. She still feels the pain. I know it because Yahweh told me.
This is the part that really hurts. Yahweh told me that when she was a little girl, He had a relationship with her, but she had drifted away from Him. My actions pushed her further away, and He wants her back.
I would love to tell her that I am sorry and that Yahweh wants her back, but I may not have the opportunity. That thought has haunted me for 9 months. I have no one to blame but myself.
When I understood what I had done, it tore me up. The fact that I am not the same person today doesn’t heal the wounds that I inflicted. The scars are real and they remain.
Weak as they are, ignorance, stupidity, and immaturity are the only excuses I have to offer, but nothing I say can erase the pain I caused. Only Yahweh can do that.
There is a lot more to the story. I would love to tell it, but I won’t tell it here. Besides my wife, there is only one person who needs to hear it.
Because of that incident, I can relate to something Paul said:
“I thank Messiah Yeshua our Lord, who has strengthened me, because He considered me faithful, putting me into service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor. Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief; and the grace of our Lord was more than abundant, with the faith and love which are found in Messiah Yeshua. It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Messiah Yeshua came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all. Yet for this reason I found mercy, so that in me as the foremost, Yeshua Messiah might demonstrate His perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life.” (1 Timothy 1: 12-16)
As a nation, I fear that we are approaching the point of no return. I can feel it in my bones, and I don’t sense a widespread feeling of remorse and repentance. I don’t even sense movement in that direction.
I’m not the only one who feels that way. I suspect that most of my readers feel it, too.
We need repentance and revival. We need a deep down, communal change of heart. I hope it happens before it’s too late.
Candidly, I think we are heading for a showdown with Yahweh, and I know who will win that battle. If it happens, we will have no one to blame but ourselves.
I have heard Yahweh’s still small voice, and I have heard Him speak as a Roaring Lion. I prefer His still small voice.
Typically, the Roaring Lion voice is reserved for Yahweh’s enemies. I don’t ever want to hear that voice again until He returns to deal with those who oppose Him.
For a related SnyderTalk editorial, see “Repentance is the Beginning, not the End”. It’s not a literal continuation, but it’s close.
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His Name is Yahweh, the website, is a companion of the book His Name is Yahweh.
To see videos that explain the importance of God’s Name, click here.
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1: Jerusalem Post—East Jerusalem residents ‘planned an ISIS-inspired plot to target security forces’:
Two resident of Sur Baher, on the outskirts of east Jerusalem, were charged Monday with planning an ISIS-inspired plot to blow up a security forces vehicle in the capital.
The Jerusalem State Attorney’s Office filed the indictment against Mu’asab Alian, 23, and Samir Abd Rabo, 38, who face charges including, conspiracy to aid an enemy in time of war, membership in a terror organization and contact with a foreign agent.
According to the indictment, Mu’asab began supporting ISIS in 2014. He learned about the group’s ideology further during his religious studies throughout 2015 and 2016.
He decided to join ISIS in Syria and made two unsuccessful attempts to travel there, once through Jordan, and once through Turkey.
The second suspect, Abed Rabo, also studied ISIS through the Internet during this period, the indictment says.
At the end of 2015 the two suspects joined with a third unnamed person to allegedly plan the making of an explosive device to target security forces in Jerusalem in the name of ISIS.
2: Times of Israel— Israel tells its citizens to leave Turkey now:
The Counter-Terrorism Bureau at the Prime Minister’s Office on Monday issued a travel warning calling on the public to avoid visiting Turkey and urging Israelis currently there to leave as soon as they can.
The warning, which raised the terror risk in Turkey from level 3 (basic concrete threat) to level 2 (high concrete threat), came in the wake of a terror attack in central Istanbul on March 19, in which three Israelis were killed and several others wounded.
That attack, the PMO said in a statement, underscored the threat emanating from Islamic State cells that seek to attack tourism sites and proved that IS has “high capabilities of carrying out further attacks.”
“Terrorist infrastructures in Turkey continue to advance additional attacks against tourist targets – including Israeli tourists – throughout the country,” the statement added.
Israelis in Turkey should “leave as soon as possible,” it said.
SnyderTalk Comment: There is no doubt in my mind that Turkey is not safe for Israelis right now.
3: Mike Strobel—Make No Mistake, the World Is at War:
What do Algeria, America, Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Britain, Burkina Faso, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Chad, China, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Italy, Ivory Coast, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Mali, Morocco, Nigeria, Niger, Pakistan, Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen have in common? Oh, and Canada, of course.
All have been attacked by Islamist terrorists since 2010. Forty-six nations in barely five years and I’ve not even included the obvious trio of horrors, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
If this isn’t a world war, I don’t know what is.
More countries are entangled with the Islunatics than were involved on both sides in the Second World War.
I know there are differences in scale and style of battle, just as the First World War differed from the second one, but it sure gives you pause.
ISIS harbours no doubt it is in a world war — with us. Nor should we.
4: Richard L. Cravatts—Anti-Semitism on California Campuses:
The California university system seems to have the dubious distinction of being the epicenter of the campus war against Israel. The situation that has apparently reached such intolerable levels that the Board of Regents of the University of California (UC Regents) was forced to take some action. This effort resulted in a study entitled the “Final Report of the Regents Working Group on Principles Against Intolerance.” The study attempts to establish guidelines by which any discrimination against a minority group on campus would be identified and censured. The report, however, specifically focused on the thorny issue of anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism as a prevalent and ugly reality throughout the California university system.
The report examined a range of incidents that occurred during the 2014-15 academic year. It cited unfortunate transgressions that “included vandalism targeting property associated with Jewish people or Judaism; challenges to the candidacies of Jewish students seeking to assume representative positions within student government; political, intellectual and social dialogue that is anti-Semitic; and social exclusion and stereotyping.”
The problem on California campuses, and on campuses across the country, is apparently that pro-Palestinian activists, in their zeal to seek self-affirmation, statehood, and “social justice” for Palestinians, have waged — presumably as a tactic in achieving those ends — an extremely caustic cognitive war against Israel and Jews. That, however, appears to be just part of a larger, more invidious intellectual jihad against Israel led by some of those in the Muslim world together with some Western elites who also wish to weaken, and ultimately destroy, the Jewish state.
5: Omer Einav—Beyond the Threats: Nasrallah’s Recent Statements:
Hezbollah is engaged in a battle for survival in the regional campaign and in power struggles on its home territory. Nasrallah’s threats to Israel are designed to remind the organization’s supporters and critics that the bedrock of its existence is the principle of resistance, i.e., the struggle against Israel. Flaunting the organization’s military capabilities reminds constituents of Hezbollah’s success against Israel during the Second Lebanon War, when it succeeded in disrupting daily life in northern Israel with ongoing rocket fire for more than a month. Nasrallah has good reason to mention this, since that war was not only the most recent significant success of the Arab world against Israel on the battlefield (at least so it was perceived at the time), but also the last time that the Arab consensus favored Hezbollah and the organization enjoyed overall support from the Sunni countries – an achievement that seems unimaginable in the current situation. As the tenth anniversary of that war approaches, it appears that Hezbollah is trying to remind itself and other actors in the Middle East of this former stature, thereby restoring to Hezbollah some of the legitimacy it gained in 2006.
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“The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17: 22-24)
See “His Name is Yahweh”.
