Chapter 6
Ruhamma
“Yet the number of the sons of Israel will be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered; and it will come about that, in the place where it is said to them, ‘you are not My people’ it will be said to them, ‘you are the sons of the living God’”. Hosea 1:10
Ruhammah means the one that has received compassion.
In this chapter I will call the Church -Ruhammah.
The God of Israel is never in confusion and yet it seems to be that in the book of Hosea he was contradicting Himself. On one hand He had cut off the 10 northern tribes ,or Ephraim, from being His people, to the point where He said that He would never forgive them. And on the other hand He stated , “And yet I will have compassion on you” . So what was He saying? I believe that He was saying, “Although I have cut you off from being children of the covenant, and in that sense you will not be Israel any more and you cannot claim your rights as children of Abraham. You are totally cut off. Yet when you mix with the nations you will forget who you are and you will become uncircumcised Gentiles and as uncircumcised Gentiles I will have compassion over you!”
The children of Israel mixed with all the nations, to the point that today in every tribe and nation there is Israeli blood mixed with the Gentiles. Ephraim who had multiplied a lot has become thoroughly mixed with the nations and in his ignorance of God he hears the call of the Lord through the Cross. And when he comes in as a Gentile through the Blood of the New Covenant...God says to him: “Now I call you My people, now you are sons of the living God”. It is indeed an amazing plan but we serve an amazing God.
In Romans 9:23-26 Paul confirms this as he quotes from Hosea: “”...Even us whom He also called not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles, as He says also in Hosea, ‘I will call those who were not My people, My people and her who was not beloved, beloved. And it shall be that in the place where it was said to them, ‘you are not My people’, there they shall be called sons of the living God”. In other words Paul is saying: You are Ephraim that was mixed with the nations and now as Gentiles God has compassion over you and He calls you My people again!
Can you imagine the wound of rejection that Ephraim carried to the nations? First he was disconnected from his brothers from Judah and Levi. A total broken brotherhood that left their marks of rejection. And then through the sin of Jeroboam that caused all of Israel to go into idolatry, there is also a ‘divorce’ from the Lord and from Temple worship. And then finally, Ephraim, the Northern kingdom is expelled from his land and rejection came to its climax!
Let us review this for a moment: The wound of rejection in Ephraim is so deep that it covers every area of their lives: 1) Separation from God and Jerusalem 2) Separation from Judah their brothers 3) Separation from the land of Israel and their inheritance.
From my limited understanding of the problem of rejection, it seems to me that if rejection is untreated it can never get better but it actually worsens with time and it creates a stony heart. A heart that is protected with many layers of hardness. Generally bitterness arises and because of an unfulfilled longing to be together with our lost relatives, we actually develop bitterness against them and deep within our hearts we start blaming them as the cause of our rejection. The persecution of Christians against Jews in the nations has had all the signs of this process. Every time that Jews have been persecuted by Christians it’s ‘because the Jews are to blame for all of our problems’.
The Gentiles that have come into the Kingdom through the cross still carry with them in their blood line ‘the rejection of Ephraim’, and the very presence of the Jews causes those wounds of rejection to open up and to start a reaction of anti-Semitism. This vicious circle can never be defeated until we repent from blaming our brother for our misfortunes and through this come to the fullness of the love of the Father that though He rejected the 10 tribes yet He has had compassion and He has brought them in as the fullness of the Gentiles. As Ruhamma, as the one that has received compassion.
This is a very deep process of cleansing and it will take us into our family line, all the way back to the land of Ephraim and to Samaria and even as far as to the sin of Jeroboam.
And that is why I call the sin of Constantine in the 4th Century, of divorcing the Church from its Jewish roots also- The sin of Jeroboam in the Church. This divorce has caused the wound of rejection and alienation and estrangement to deepen in the Church. Only repentance from anti-Semitism and reconnection with our Roots can heal that wound.
Another ‘root problem’ that a large portion of Christians have and that has caused a tremendous amount of cruelty and anti-Semitism is jealousy. Jealousy is an outcome of rejection. “...Jealousy is as cruel as the grave; the coals thereof are coals of fire. which hath a most vehement flame”. Song of Songs 8:5. The ovens of Auschwits, Bergen Belsen, and Treblinka during the Nazi regime where so many of my people were exterminated had the smell of jealousy! “Jealousy is the rage of a man therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance”. Proverbs 6:34. “And He will lift up a standard for the nations and will assemble the banished ones of Israel. And will gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. Then the jealousy of Ephraim will depart, and those who harass Judah will be cut off; Ephraim will not be jealous of Judah..” Isaiah 11: 12, 13.
This is the time that God is gathering the dispersed ones of Judah. From all over the world the Jewish people are being brought to their homeland, Israel.
However, the outcome of this ingathering is that finally Ephraim will not be jealous anymore. Since Ephraim became ‘the fullness of the Gentiles’, this harmful jealousy has affected many Christians. I have personally experienced the jealousy of Ephraim many times and especially from Christians who have previously accepted me and opened their hearts to my ministry, as a Messianic Jew. It always goes like that: They accept me and proclaim their great love for Israel and for the Jewish people, they love the anointing and the prophetic ministry. We become very close friends and then all of a sudden jealousy starts coming up to the surface. Without understanding why, they start lashing against me and the ministry in subtle ways. The spirit that has manifested from these brothers and sisters always seek to kill, quench and destroy the anointing in me! Some times it is under the guise of ‘wisdom’, ‘protection’, ‘for my own good’, ‘for the good of the people’ etc... My heart then starts aching deeply and then I know I am again in the presence of the Jealousy of Ephraim. Many times during our ‘Back to the Roots’ seminars , as people are repenting, someone would approach me and confess to me that they have been jealous of me and they do not know why. The same thing happens in the story of the prodigal son. As the father receives him back from being lost, with open arms and a great celebration, the other son who stayed home all the time becomes jealous and refuses to partake of the celebration. The father comforts him by saying : “Everything that I have is yours”. (Luke 15:11-32). One of the main reasons for this oldage jealousy is that Judah is the kingly tribe, from these tribes came king David and from this tribe came King Jesus!
What is the remedy for jealousy? To my understanding the only remedy is; Repentance.
1) Recognizing the problem 2) Confessing it out loud before the Lord and before someone else preferably a Jew 3) Repenting and renouncing it as sin 4) Allowing humility to come in and any selfish desires to die 5) Asking God to help you understand the full extent of the love of the Father to you.
Of all of these- humility is the key and it is connected with taking an active part in the natural restoration of the Jewish people to their land:
“Thus says the Lord God, Behold I will lift up My hand to the nations, and set up My standards for the peoples; and they will bring your sons in their bosom and your daughters will be carried on their shoulders. And kings will be your guardians, and their princesses your nurses. They will bow down to you with their faces to the earth, and you shall know that I am the Lord”.Isaiah 49: 22,23. Who could be these humble kings and queens ? There is no doubt in my mind that those are the Sons of God, the real Christians!.
Once in the midst of one of our prophetic conferences, as the Holy Spirit took over we were dancing and worshipping the Lord , the spirit of repentance fell on all of us. We were on the floor weeping. Many people were weeping for the Jews. And then a prophetess, friend of ours, started kissing my feet and my husband’s feet. As she was doing that and weeping I was weeping as well. Then I asked her: “Did you know the Scripture from Isaiah 49, about kings and queens bowing down before the Jews at the time of their restoration? And she said: “I have never read that verse before. The Holy Spirit showed me to do this!” This of course was a prophetic conference, were the Holy Spirit was allowed freedom to minister in a prophetic manner, and He led her to ‘do the word literally’!
We must proclaim a holy war against this old age, destructive jealousy:
“Wrath is fierce and anger is a flood, but who can stand before jealousy?” Proverbs 27:4
Repentance and Humility are the keys!
We also need to remember that though Jeroboam caused the Israelies to sin, the Lord punished them all. He held them all accountable. In the same way though Constantine made the divorce from the Jewish roots official, still we as believers, are all accountable. We, like Daniel in Babylon, (Daniel 9:3-20), need to have ‘collective accountability’, and repent personall. There is a mixture of paganism in the Church of today that the Lord will intensely cleanse, as we approach the end of this era. Take for example the pagan rites that accompany the celebration of Easter; the looking for eggs and the bunny rabbits. These are all left overs from pagan rites for fertility that accompanied orgies, and then the slaughter of the babies that were conceived during these orgies, then they dipped eggs in their blood. The rabbits are very prolific animals and so they are a symbol of fertility. Even the name Easter is derived from the goddess of fertility: Ishtar. Why would we keep calling our celebrations of Messiah by pagan names? Or use pagan rites? The Lord God is holy and we are a holy people set apart and separated from the ways of this world. There are a lot more examples. But we need to allow a holy cleansing and convicting to happen to us. Every denomination of Christianity has traditions that are unholy and we have to be humble enough to present all of our traditions before the Lord and let Him reveal to us what is holy and what is totally unbiblical. Going back to the Roots is an answer to the mixture of paganism in the Church. We need to start taking God’s word and law literally, as revealed to us by His Holy Spirit. The Lord is calling us to humble ourselves and to let Him check our hearts and our ways, if they be pleasing unto Him. A holy, healthy fear of God and of His word will be returned to us as we let ourselves be grafted back into the original roots of the Church.
History has a tendency to keep repeating itself, and a new wave of persecution against the Jews is about to arise. In fact all the nations are about to come against Jerusalem: “For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city will be captured, the houses plundered, the women ravished, and half of the city exiled, but the rest of the people will not be cut off from the city. Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations as when He fights in the day of battle.” Zecharaiah 14:2,3
Where will the Christians be in this battle? Will they stand alongside their brothers this time and support them or will they blame them again for all the evil in the world?
The healing from the rejection of ages is the key. A healed and cleansed Church, a Ruhamma Church is about to arise. And when it arises filled with love for Israel and for their Jewish brothers then the world will know that the Father sent the Son!
A prayer of Repentance and Healing
Please pray this prayer in order to start a deep healing from rejection
Dear Father in Heaven. Thank you for having compassion over me, a Gentile that was totally cut off from the promises of Israel. Thank you for bringing me near through the precious blood of the New Covenant. Please forgive me if I have not extended the same compassion also to my Jewish brothers and even to them that are still in unbelief.
I realize that you gave them up for a season so that I might be saved. Please help me realize the full extent of your compassion. I accept today your love and fully renounce all rejection, jealousy, and bitterness in my life. I also renounce any idolatrous and pagan traditions that I may have. I place all of my religious traditions before you and I ask to reveal to me the ones that do not please you. I open myself up so that you can lead me through a process of repentance and healing. I thank you Lord that I am your Ruhamma. Help me to be Ruhamma to everyone in my path and especially to my people the Jews.
in Jesus name I pray. Amen