Watch the video, or read the transcript below.

It’s near the end of Ramadan here in Jerusalem. Most would probably know that Ramadan is a month that Muslims are required in their religion to fast during the daytime from both food and water.

But at night, they have meals. People say the grocery stores sell more during Ramadan than any other time. They have big meals at night.

During the day, they’re to fast, and on the 27th day of Ramadan, at night, it’s called the Night of Power. That is a night for revelation, when they stay up all night, and we’re praying and agreeing together here in Jerusalem that they will not receive any revelation except from the Holy Spirit, and there’ll be no other spirit, no other revelation that will get through.

We want each one to be covered by the blood of Yeshua, the blood of Jesus, to protect their minds and hearts, and we want them to have a real revelation from the Holy Spirit showing them that God does have a Son, that God is a Father, that He has an only begotten Son, and His name is Jesus in Arabic, Yeshua.

Isaiah 19: A Prophetic Understanding of Israel, the Middle East, and the Nations

Jesus gave His sinless blood as the sacrifice for them as well as for the whole world. We’re praying for them in a very special way, in this specific way. So we gathered a few together here in Jerusalem so that we could share a teaching that’s foundational to understanding what God is doing in the Middle East. It’s especially about Isaiah 19.

In recent years, we’ve begun to understand there’s also an Isaiah 60 highway, and I will touch briefly on that. But the main part of this will come from a global view of what are God’s purposes for the nations.

Why did He create us all so different? In the Bible, the word is ethnos in Greek, meaning ethnic group. Why did He create each ethnic group?

We’ll see how God has a purpose for each one. Then we’ll zero into the purposes for the ethnic groups that are here in the Middle East, especially those that are physical or spiritual sons of Abraham. And then we will look more specifically at what God is doing right now.

We don’t want to pray just in reaction to news. We want to be ahead of the news, then read it afterward and see what God has said. We want to know what God is doing in this region and how we can cooperate with Him, and we ask Him for the grace of the sons of Issachar, who could understand the times and seasons and what Israel should do.

We don’t want to just pray in reaction to the news or even to what the devil is doing. We want to pray ahead of him. God’s always several moves ahead on the chessboard, and it’s actually a 3D chess game. He’s way ahead of the devil.

He always has a perfect plan from all eternity. Plan A is working just fine. There’s no Plan B, no Plan C, and so on. There’s only one plan—Plan A—and it’s right on track.

Nothing and no one can stop God from achieving Plan A. He will fulfill everything He said.
So we want to pray out of His Word, too. That’s why it’s so important we proclaim and pray scriptures of promise over some of these very troublesome areas right now.

1. All Nations Have a Calling from God

Point number one: all nations, again, the Greek word is ethnos, which means ethnic group, all ethnic groups have a gift and a calling from God.

In 1980, when I first went overseas, Patricia and I thought, “Why don’t they do things right like we do in America?” Then when we moved to Belgium in 1983, we were more settled. Once we moved there, I think that was 1985, we began to adjust to the culture and said, “Why don’t Americans do things right like Europeans do?”

When you’re in a culture and adapt to that culture, you see its strengths.

Every ethnic group has its strengths and weaknesses. Part of the Kingdom of God is that we begin to see with God’s perspective and heart. He loves every ethnic group with its strengths and weaknesses.

He loves us, and we all have a role to play in His purposes and plans. For a while, I thought it was spiritual to say, “I’m not really American; I’m Kingdom of God.”

Then I realized God created all the ethnic groups. Americans are not an ethnic group; we’re many ethnic groups. I’m part Native American, that’s one part, but there’s a mixture of others. Most people in most countries are a mixture of different things.

An Example of Ethnic identities in our prayers

The bottom line is we have certain primary ethnic identities. If you are a mixture, He will sometimes use one ethnic identity in prayer and another in another kind of prayer.

For instance, we went on a prayer journey in 1998 or 1999 in America, praying through the 13 original colonies, confessing some of the deepest sins that had happened in those places. We repented of the bad roots, which were the gold seekers, and blessed the good roots, which were the God seekers.

There’s always a mixture of roots, and we need to pray both. In certain situations, as part Native American, my great-grandmother was full-blood Native American, I was the one confessing the sins of natives and the curses that had been put at times upon Europeans who had come, and breaking those curses by the blood of Yeshua.

I could stand in as a native. But in other situations, with many full-blooded natives, I was the European background person confessing on behalf of my European ancestors for very evil things that some had done.

As intercessors, God uses your ethnic background. You don’t need to be ashamed of it or try to get rid of it. You just need to pray, “God, redeem everything that’s in me, every bit of blood that’s in me, every ethnic identity.” For a while, I thought it was spiritual to say, “No, I’m just Kingdom of God.”

And we are Kingdom of God. There is this common Kingdom of forgiveness and all these things that are Kingdom of God, but we are also a representation of part of the glory of God that He puts into ethnic groups.

God’s Gifts to the Nations

The bottom line is God doesn’t erase ethnic identity. He redeems it by the blood of Yeshua, and then we walk that out. What does that mean? We have guests here today who are part of the Indigenous Embassy of Jerusalem with us, and part of the discovery process for all these different indigenous groups is: How does God redeem our culture?

What are the gifts He gave? How have they been abused or misused by others or by ourselves?
How do we see them redeemed and use them so that they play their part in God’s glory? In Revelation 21:22–24, this is after the millennium.

It’s not even just after Jesus Yeshua comes back. It’s after the millennium. He says, “I saw the new Jerusalem come down. I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.”

The city had no need for the sun or the moon to shine in it. For the glory of God illuminated it. We won’t need electric lights anymore. We’ll just have the glory of the Lord illuminate. Isn’t that so cool?

The Lamb is its light. And then he says, “And the nations or the ethnic groups of those who are saved will walk in its light.”

What light? The glory of God.

And the kings of the earth will bring their glory and honor into it. So even in the new Jerusalem, the nations, the ethnic groups come to bring their glory, their honor.

So it’s like God is saying, I’m not going to let anybody have all my glory and all my honor. I’ll divide it up among all the different ethnic groups, and each ethnic group will have certain aspects of my glory and my honor that they illustrate, that they manifest, and as people get to know them and their strengths, they begin to see something of God in that particular ethnic group.

Jerusalem is called the gateway to the nations, and it certainly is.There are so many different nations represented here, from people all around the earth coming in. .

We also travel out to the nations, and we’ve realized when we go out or when people come in, they each have gifts of the Lord that another group doesn’t have in the same way. I’ll just give a few examples. I can’t hit all the ethnic groups obviously, but let me hit two or three.

When the Koreans first started coming in here, you’d come into a time of Korean prayer and everybody’s praying in tongues at the same time. Have you heard it? They’re all praying in tongues like machine guns going off, like cannons going off. When you’re in Korea and it’s tens of thousands of people, it’s really amazing. It’s just this tremendous breakthrough prayer.

They have an anointing that breaks through things. One time we were having great difficulty for our youth conference to get some of the kids from Bethlehem because there was a security situation, and the man who helped us there was gone.

The Bethlehem pastor called me and said, “I’m really sorry, but the Israeli official I’m good friends with, the one who always gives me the permits for the Bethlehem kids. is gone on vacation, and I don’t know what we can do because no one else understands like he does that these kids are not dangerous. They’re wonderful kids, and they need to be together with the Jewish kids.” I said, “Thank you, pastor.”

I asked a Korean group that was coming in to pray. I said, “Could you take this on, and pray for a breakthrough in this?” They all began to pray at the same time, and then they all stopped at the same time. It’s like they just know from the Holy Spirit when to stop. They all stopped and said, “It’s finished. It’s okay.”

I said, “Okay, look at the time here.” The pastor said that at that particular time when they said, “It is finished,” he got a phone call from an Israeli military official who was on vacation calling an Arab pastor in Bethlehem. Wow.

He said, “I thought you were on vacation.” He said, “Well, I am, but I suddenly thought, I wonder if the pastor needs me for some reason. Maybe I need to call him.”

He called him on his vacation. The pastor explained, and he said, “Oh, give me 10 minutes and you’ll have your permits.” Ten minutes later, he called back, “You’ve got your permits for the kids to come in.”

That’s breakthrough prayer. Do you understand? There are different anointings.

We’ve noticed in certain moments where something new was going to be birthed by God. One of the early days with a large number of Arab and Jewish pastors together here in Israel. We were having a meeting, but there were several mainland Chinese visiting who asked if they could come along, and of course we said yes.

They were sitting in the back watching everything. At a certain moment, God began to do something very deep between one of the Jewish pastors and one of the Arab pastors. They were confessing on behalf of their people to each other.

As they were doing it, you could feel the Holy Spirit coming in. It felt like something new was going to be born. We were all praying in the center, those from here in the land.

Suddenly we were surrounded by all these Chinese, and they just started sobbing and weeping. Paul talks about groanings that cannot be uttered. He says, “I will travail until Christ be formed in you.”

From that day on, it went to a whole other level, the relationships between the Jewish Messianic and Arab pastors in the land, because something of the one new man was birthed to another level. It was this Chinese gifting it in that way.

There are so many different things. We have something over here that was given by the French, that gold crown over there, and they brought a bottle of perfume, Chanel No. 5, and put a label across it. I can’t remember if it just said “Worship to the Lord,” something like that, a perfume unto the Lord. They said, “Let our worship be a perfume.” This is so French.

Every perfume maker is basically in France. A house of prayer in France is called a house of perfume. It’s their culture. It’s their ethnos. It’s who they are.

Over the years one of the things we’ve learned with scheduling is how amazingly you can count on Swiss and German people to be on time, show up for their watch, carrying it faithfully, and not forgetting. That gift of time, the gift of faithfulness, is a very important gift. Because if everybody forgets, we don’t have 24/7.

And some people do forget. Some ethnic groups forget more easily than others. Some are late more often.

We all have our strengths and weaknesses. When we need help getting something in order, we’ll often ask a German or a Swiss person because they just have a gift for getting things into order. It’s an amazing gift.

The Indonesians have a gift of very sweet worship that is simple and childlike, but when they start worshiping, the fire of God comes in the room. You just know there’s something there. When they get to the Middle East in large numbers, we’re going to see big breakthroughs through the Indonesians.

So there are all these different gifts, different kinds of gifts, and God uses us all.

Every culture, every ethnic group has its strength, but it also has its weakness. And that’s why we all need each other. Your weakness is made up by my strength. My weakness is made up by your strength. We all need each other. We’re all part of the reflection of His glory.

So again, He says here in the book of Revelation, in the new Jerusalem of all places, all the ethnic groups who are saved will walk in its light, and the kings of those peoples will bring their glory and their honor, their worship to the Lord, to the feet of Yeshua here in Jerusalem, except it’ll be a totally new Jerusalem by then.

What an amazing thing. But even then, God doesn’t erase ethnicity. He redeems it, and He helps us to repent and be healed where things have been twisted by the demonic in every one of our cultures.

And unfortunately, I say a lot of European and American missionaries, when they went to other countries, judged other cultures by their ethnic gifts and said, “This culture is all wrong, and you need to become like us.”

We went to a church in China where you felt like you were in England instead of China, but there were hardly any Chinese there. It didn’t reach people the same way it did when they became themselves.

So the Chinese brought forth their culture, their gifts. There’s definitely a place for missions, but missions is not to erase ethnic identity. It’s to encourage and redeem ethnic identity and to help people become who they are.

Like I said, I’m part Native American. And once I started meeting other Native American believers, I suddenly realized I’m not so weird after all. I have visions, as some of you know, all the time.

One guy said, “You have these HD movies, high-def movies,” because these visions keep coming. By God’s grace, many of them have been fulfilled in great detail. I began to realize when I was with other Native Americans, more full-blooded than I was, that almost every one of them sees visions all the time. It’s in the culture.

But it can be used by the devil to see demonic things if you’re not a believer. Once you’re a believer and it’s redeemed, it can become a prophetic gift like the prophets had..

2. We Must Know God’s Heart Fully

To know God’s heart fully, we must know His heart for all the descendants of Abraham. Now we’re coming into the Middle East.

We’ve established that every ethnic group has its giftings. Here, there are many ethnic groups.
People don’t realize that the Turkish people are a whole other ethnicity. The Kurdish are another. There are many different ethnic groups.

But the two primary ethnic groups at the center of the story in the Bible, in God’s history, are the descendants of Isaac and the descendants of Ishmael—the Jewish people, and what became broadly identified as the Arab people.

I’ve found that many people not even physically descended from Ishmael identify with that spirit. So you have this whole thing in the Bible about Isaac and Ishmael. We need to know God’s heart for all the descendants of Abraham.

You think you know a lot until you move here. Then you begin to realize how complicated everything is, people explaining different stories and perspectives, and it all gets quite complicated.

I said, “Lord, help me sort through this. Help me gain clarity of Your heart. I want to pray according to Your heart, Your mind, and Your purposes.” By God’s grace, very early on when we were here, maybe one or two years, I was invited by a friend in town named John Dawson, who works in reconciliation.

He said, “I meet with a group of Arab and Jewish pastors. It’s one of their first times meeting together. You’ve done a lot in reconciliation. Would you like to come?” I said, “I’d love that.”

So we went, and there was a man named Bassam Adranly. Some of you may know Siona, part of the staff here, a wonderful worship leader, songwriter, and lover of the Lord. Siona’s father is Bassam Adranly. He grew up in the Old City. I was just with him this week in a pastors’ gathering.

In that gathering back around 2001, he said this: “If you love,” and he’s saying this as an Arab, “if you love the Arab people with a soulish love, a love born out of stories, movies, books, whatever, you will hate the Jewish people.

If you love the Jewish people out of a soulish love,” meaning ideas that are romanticized or from stories, books, or situations you’ve heard about, “you’ll hate the Arab people.

But if you love either one with a Holy Spirit love, with agape love, God’s love, you’ll love the other one, because He loves both.”

Now the Jewish people also have a unique identity. Among all the identities, they’re called the firstborn son. The reason is because God chose them through the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,

Through them, He would bring forth the knowledge of the invisible God when almost the rest of the world was serving idols. He would bring forth the Scriptures, and they were faithful with the Scriptures. He found a people and cared for them. It’s part of their ethnic identity.

Remember the Dead Sea Scrolls. The scroll of Isaiah they discovered was 900 years older than the oldest one they had, and in 900 years of hand-copying, only one little yod had changed, like a comma, in 900 years of copying by hand.

The Jewish people were so disciplined about this. You had to count the number of letters in the line and the middle letter, ensuring each copy matched exactly.

You had to wash your hands every time you wrote anything containing the name of God. There were all these rules, but it means we can trust what we have of the Word of God because it was carefully kept by the Jewish people.

The Messiah would come through them. So there’s a unique identity as the firstborn son, but Israel is not the only son. Israel is the firstborn among the ethnic groups of the nations. God’s plan was that Israel would be a light to the nations, bringing the truth about the one true God, His Word, and the Messiah to the nations.

When Bassam said this, it struck me: “If you love either one with God’s love, you’ll begin to love the other.” So I began to repent and ask the Lord, “Search my heart. Show me where I have prejudices and ideas that aren’t You. Give me Your heart to love the Jewish people and the Arab people.”

Loving Isaac and Ishmael with God’s Love

We had an Egyptian staff member here in the early years when it was a little easier to get in on tourist visas. She was here for five years on tourist visas, miraculously. Born in Australia, she had an Australian passport, which helped a lot. Even so, it was a miracle.

She asked us once, “Rick and Patricia, the more I’m around you, I feel like you really love the Jewish people, yet you really love the Arab people too. How do you love both?”

I said, “We repent a lot. It’s easy to love the Jewish people if you don’t work with any. It’s easy to love the Arab people if you don’t know any. It’s like Zoom. It’s easy to love faces on a screen. But when you’re with real people and real interactions, you have to receive God’s love to love. We all do.”

So part of it is repentance, saying, “Lord, I’m sorry. I took offense at what this person said, or at what was on the news.” We must continually say, “Lord, keep our hearts pure. Keep them clean from soulishness or worse, from our flesh or the demonic. Help us walk in Your love and receive Your love for everyone around us.”

Bassam said one other thing that hit me: “If you love your own ministry with a soulish love, you will hate other ministries.” That’s true. The Kingdom of God means we begin to love each other’s ministries, not just our own.

Pray for a Spirit of Adoption

It was an amazing call that Abraham obeyed. God did it because He knew Abraham would command his children and bring them up to follow after Him. It set the foundation for worshiping the invisible God.

God also promised to take care of Hagar. In Genesis 17, He gave huge promises for Ishmael, lifelong promises, descendants, great wealth, and blessings. So we don’t need to side with the Muslim understanding that God unfairly chose Isaac instead of Ishmael. That’s not true.

In the true story, it all comes together in one tent, God’s tent, Abraham’s family. He heals it

What this showed me is that one of the main ruling spirits over the Muslim world is a spirit of rejection. That spirit runs very deep. Offense, bitterness, vengeance, and rejection are deeply rooted in Islam.

Having lived here for 25 years and being rooted, we have eight of our fourteen grandchildren who are Jewish Israelis, we’ve seen that there’s also much rejection among Jewish people because of centuries of persecution.

Most Gentiles are only aware of the Nazis and concentration camps, but persecution goes back to around the year 325, one wave after another.

The Jews were driven out of nation after nation. Many don’t realize that Queen Isabella, after borrowing Jewish money to fund her war against the Muslims, refused to pay it back and ordered all Jews to leave Spain.

But the bottom line is that there’s a spirit of rejection. We really need to pray for both Jewish and Muslim peoples, because Muslims identify with Ishmael, even when they’re not Arab or physically descended from him. So we need to realize there’s this spirit of rejection and pray for the spirit of adoption.

So when we pray tonight during the Night of Power, one of the things let’s pray for is the Spirit of Adoption to be poured out mightily.

3. Form Our Thinking Around God’s Word

Number three, our thinking must be formed by God’s Word and not by human media. This is really important in today’s world. It’s unbelievable how polarized people are because of whatever media they listen to. And more and more, you can choose which media you hear, one perspective and never anything else.

It was always a myth, this whole thing of objective journalism. There is no objective journalism because a human being writes the report, a human being gets on television, and we’re all affected by prejudices and backgrounds of all kinds.

So there’s no such thing as totally objective journalism. You choose what to report or not to report, what to show or not to show.

We need to get rid of that naive idea that anything we read in the news is objective. Somebody wrote it, somebody filmed it, somebody spoke that report. Now, praise God, some will be much more truthful, and we need to seek those who genuinely report truth.

I think of Chris Mitchell, who comes here from CBN News, and he’s so committed to finding truth, “Lord, help me to know the truth.” He helps get truth out, but every single person is still a person, they’re subjective, not totally objective.

Our thinking, the Bible says, is not to be formed by outward things; it’s to be formed by the Word of God. In Romans 12, he says, “Be renewed in your thinking”, not by this news or that news, but by the Word of God.

So we’ve got to always come back to the Scriptures. When we don’t understand something we hear or read, we don’t judge the Word of God by that. We judge that news by the Word of God.
We stick with the Word. What aligns with what God says in His Word?

So it’s really important that we pray and say, “Lord, cleanse me. Wash me with the water of the Word.” He says, “Wash with the water, wash it out.” Wash out other people’s anger, bitterness, or whatever comes through their news. “Lord, help me to get Your heart.”

That’s why we need worship. Worship helps us get up to God’s heart and begin to know His heart.

4. The Spiritual Battle for Jerusalem

When I was praying in the early years, I felt like the Lord spoke this to me: The bottom line in the Middle East is the spiritual battle for Jerusalem. And in Jerusalem, it’s the spiritual battle for the Temple Mount. And on the Temple Mount, it’s the spiritual battle for who will reign and who will be worshiped on God’s holy hill.

That’s why in Psalm 2, God says the nations can rage all they want. They can say, “Let’s throw off their chains; God can’t tell us what to do.” But it doesn’t work.

He says, “I have appointed my King on my holy hill.” Who’s the King? Jesus, Yeshua is the King. No King but Yeshua.

He’s the only real King, the only wise King, the only one fit to reign through the ages because He alone has perfect wisdom, justice, righteousness, and understanding. He even knows the motives of hearts. He’s perfectly made to rule and reign because He has everything needed in a ruler.

He is also God, the fullness of God come in human form. So He is worthy of worship. That’s why there are verses referring to Him this way even in the book of Daniel, and by Revelation it’s very clear: worship is offered to Yeshua.

It’s not three gods. It’s a triunity. I prefer that word over “trinity.” God is a triunity. He is one, Adonai, the Lord our God is one God. But He is the mystery of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Who will be worshiped in the end? Not the Antichrist. The devil never cared who was worshiped. At different times they set up statues of Jupiter, Zeus, and others through the centuries. Right now, I believe the false moon god of Saudi Arabia is being worshiped by most people who go to up to that hill in that mosque. It’s very clear that Allah was originally a moon god in Saudi Arabia, worshiped 500 years before Muhammad. Muhammad got it right that there was only one God, but he got the wrong God. That’s the problem.

If you compare the culture that comes forth out of the Jewish revelation of God and the Christian revelation of God through Yeshua, they match completely. It’s one God. It’s not Old Testament and New Testament as two different things. It’s one God. The same always and forever.

His character as Father is consistent. But in Islam, there’s no Father. In Islam, there’s no forgiveness. It’s a fatherless religion. And we need to realize there’s a huge battle that can’t be explained in natural terms. It can’t just be explained by wars, borders, or politics. It’s like no other situation in the world.

There is a spiritual battle for Jerusalem beyond anything else on earth. That’s why God tells us, in the only city mentioned this way in the Bible, that every believer should pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

“Seek the peace of Jerusalem.” That word shalom doesn’t just mean the absence of war. It means wholeness, completeness, and fulfilling God’s destiny, even in conflict.

The battle is for that hill, who will be worshiped and who will reign there. Right now, many are worshiping a false moon god from Saudi Arabia. If we understand Scripture correctly, in the end times there’ll be a short season where the Antichrist himself will be worshiped, but it’s all temporary.

They all will vanish. He is forever. His name is forever. His throne is forever. His kingdom is forever.

In Ezekiel 43:7. It says, “Son of man, this is the place of My throne, the place for the soles of My feet.” Other versions say “footstool, where I will live among the sons of Israel forever.”

This makes it clear that from that time onward, His reign doesn’t stop and restart in another age. He has reigned, He is reigning, and He will reign from His holy hill. God has appointed His King. He said in Psalm 2, “I’ve appointed My King on My holy hill.” And here He makes clear that this hill is the place of His throne, the footstool of His throne on earth.

When Jesus Yeshua returns, He won’t reign from the Mount of Olives. He’ll return there, cause an earthquake and other things, then come over here to the Temple Mount and reign from His holy hill.

People ask, “What about John 4, where it says you don’t have to worship in Jerusalem anymore to worship God?” That’s true, you can worship in spirit and truth anywhere in the world. But that doesn’t remove the governmental calling of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is the only place in the whole world where God reigns and where His government intersects the governments of the earth. The only place we can come to do homage in a governmental way before the King is in Jerusalem.

Even though we can worship Him in spirit and truth everywhere, still, there’s something very special about this place because of God’s calling on it. And He says, “Israel doesn’t even own the mountain, God owns it.” He says, “It’s My holy hill.” But He also says, “I will live there among the sons of Israel forever.”

So He gives stewardship to Israel over His holy hill, which has caused many problems for them.
But God will give Israel grace because they are called to steward that holy hill, whatever that means.

When I was in southern Lebanon in Baalbek, the headquarters of Hezbollah. I was with a friend; we were there on a prophetic prayer action. The Lord sovereignly opened the door. Hezbollah said, “We’ve taken over part of the museum and made it into a place to tell our story. Would you like to know more about us?”

We said, “Yes, we’re very interested in political movements and things like this.” This man takes us in, and just remembering it is traumatic. He shows us video after video of them doing horrible things to people. his face gleeful as he describes it.

It was so demonic, so twisted. Patricia said when she saw a picture someone took of me, “I’ve never seen you look whiter than a ghost.” It was overwhelming.

At the end, he said, “This is what we are all about.” This was around 2000 or 2001. He didn’t mention Palestinians or a Palestinian state. He said, “We are all about that hill. We have to take back Jerusalem, and we will do it with our blood.”

He said the little green boxes represent their caskets with the cedar of Lebanon, and the red represents their blood. “We will give the last drop of our blood to take back that hill.”

Now, why? Muslims can go up there, it’s not like they lack access. But why is this hill the center of such rage and anger? Why was the invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, called the “Al-Aqsa Flood”? They didn’t choose another name, the name was Al-Aqsa, which is the name of the silver mosque, the older mosque there. They called it the Al-Aqsa Flood.

Satan builds counterfeit highways toward Jerusalem. Their whole goal is to take Jerusalem.
I was in Iraq and heard tens of thousands in the streets shouting, “With our blood, we will take back Jerusalem.”
Patricia and I were in Tahrir Square during the revolution in Egypt, when the Muslim Brotherhood was taking over, and we saw on television tens of thousands calling for the same to take back Jerusalem everywhere.

It’s always about Jerusalem. It’s not even just about Israel. It’s about Jerusalem. The spiritual battle for Jerusalem, and in Jerusalem, the spiritual battle for His holy hill, and on His holy hill, the spiritual battle for who will be worshiped on His holy hill.

The early Bible translators who went to the Arab people asked, “What is your word for the one who created everything?” And they said, “Allah.” So Christian Arabs have a Bible that says Allah for God.

God understands that when they read Allah, they mean the God who created everything, the God of the Bible. They don’t mean the false moon god from Saudi Arabia. But when Muslims pray to Allah, I believe they’re praying to the false moon god from Saudi Arabia.

Here’s a quote from a Hamas leader in 2006 in Damascus. He said, “By Allah, you will be defeated. You will be defeated in Palestine. True, it is Israel that is being defeated there. But when Israel is defeated, its path is defeated. The cowards who hide behind it are defeated. Tomorrow, our nation will sit on the throne of the world.”

Now, it’s interesting, he sees Islam as a nation. He has more understanding of kingdom than most Christians have of the Kingdom of God. He said “our nation.” But where will they sit on the throne of the world? Jerusalem, on that hill.

Why wouldn’t it be in Mecca if Mecca is really the center of Muhammad’s revelation? Why wouldn’t Mecca be the center? Why are they all obsessed with Jerusalem and that hill? Why?
Because Yeshua, Jesus, will reign there. The devil wants to do anything he can to keep Jesus from reigning.

He wants to do anything he can to keep Yeshua from being worshiped and honored on His holy hill. He doesn’t care who is worshiped there as long as it’s not the true and living God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and His only begotten Son, Jesus, Yeshua.

That’s why the Muslims have set up a pillar there, many of you have seen it, that says, “God has no son.” Why do they make such a big deal out of that? It’s because the devil doesn’t want them to know that God has an only begotten Son who can forgive their sins.

It’s a spiritual battle, and that’s why it’s so important we understand it cannot be explained merely in terms of borders, checkpoints, and stories. “This was the ceasefire line then,” and “this was the ceasefire line now,” and all those things. You can’t understand the depth of hatred in jihadists until you understand that they are demonized and blinded.

What is God Doing About This Spiritual Battle?

So what is God doing about this? As we said, God is always way ahead. That’s why in prayer, we need to say, “God, what are You doing ahead of the devil? I don’t want to pray in reaction to what the devil’s doing. I want to know what You’re doing. I want to proclaim what You’re doing.”

The Isaiah 19 highway, and later Isaiah 60, are key to restoring the worship of the true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, on His holy hill in Jerusalem.

Now let’s talk about Assyria. Assyria is not the modern nation-state of Syria. Assyria was an empire, the Assyrian Empire. Much of Turkey, all of Armenia, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Gaza, Jordan, Kuwait, even the western part of Iran, called Elam in the Scriptures, and Cyprus were all part of that region.

So when we read Isaiah 19, all of those nations are included.

Let’s read Isaiah 19. I encourage you later to read the whole chapter to understand the full context. The chapter shows how God judges nations in order to redeem nations, that His judgments are good.

There are many judgments in Isaiah 19 against Egypt, but by the end of the chapter, they are called His people. The judgments bring them to a place of crying out to God.

For time’s sake, we’ll take the last verses: “In that day, five cities in Egypt will speak the language of Canaan.” At the time Isaiah wrote this, the language of Canaan was already Hebrew.

We know Egyptian Christians who are studying Hebrew in Egypt online so they can be ready to speak it. Isn’t that great? They love this scripture. They say, “I hope my city is one of the ones speaking Hebrew, and I want to learn it,” because they believe this word.

“They will speak the language of Canaan; they will swear allegiance to the Lord Almighty.”

Not to the false moon god of Saudi Arabia, but to the true Lord, the God of the Bible.

“One of them will be called the City of the Sun, Heliopolis,” which means the city where the sun god was worshiped.

Worldwide, the worship of the sun is another form of idolatry. But Isaiah says, “In that day there will be an altar to the Lord in the heart of Egypt.” The literal Hebrew means “in the middle of Egypt,” not just Cairo. If you take the midpoint between Alexandria and Aswan, the center is Asyut, and we’ll get to that in a moment.

“There will be an altar to the Lord in the heart of Egypt, and a monument to the Lord at its border. It will be a sign and a witness to the Lord Almighty in the land of Egypt. When they cry out to the Lord because of their oppressors, He will send them a Savior and a defender, and He will rescue them.”

So the Lord will make Himself known to the Egyptians, and in that day they will acknowledge the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They will worship with sacrifices and grain offerings, make vows to the Lord, and keep them.

“The Lord will strike Egypt with a plague; He will strike them and heal them.” That’s interesting, because in Hosea 6 He says He’ll do the same to Israel, that He will strike and then heal.

We must understand that the judgments of God are always righteous and good and lead to redemption. They’re not to destroy us but to set us free from bondage, lies, and oppression. He is after redemption.

“They will turn to the Lord in Egypt, and He will respond to their pleas and heal them.” Then He says that on that day, after this redemptive work in Egypt, there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. “The Assyrians will go to Egypt, and the Egyptians to Assyria, and they will worship together.”

That’s powerful for all of us who are part of the House of Prayer and night-and-day worship to the Lord. As Isaiah 62 prophesies, He would appoint watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem who would never hold their peace but cry out day and night.

He prophesied 24/7 worship in Jerusalem, but not just there. All over the world, He’s raising up 24/7 worship to shift the atmosphere over cities and nations. He says worship is the key. “The Egyptians will start worshiping with the Assyrians.”

Why is that a big deal? Because the Egyptians hated the Assyrians, and the Assyrians hated the Egyptians. The army of Assyria would destroy Egypt and take over, then Egypt would destroy Assyria and take over. It went back and forth.

They were bitter enemies. And He said, “They’ll worship together.”

That’s the start of the highway, the worshiping together begins the highway. “In that day, Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth.”

The idea is not first, second, third place. It means He starts something in Egypt and Assyria that turns their hearts toward Israel. In Hebrew, it carries the idea of singing a third part in harmony, a third voice.

Suddenly they say, “Hey, Israel, we love you now! Sing along with us!” And they all worship together. It’s amazing. “The Lord Almighty will bless them, saying, ‘Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.’”

By then the whole nation becomes His people. What an amazing promise! “Blessed be Assyria, the work of My hands”. It will take work, but He will get Assyria where she needs to be. “And Israel will be My inheritance.”

That’s hard to comprehend. How could we be His inheritance? God doesn’t need anything, but He desires the worship of Israel. It’s what He longs for.

In the year 2000, I went to Iraq, in Nineveh, the restored gate of Nineveh in Mosul, which was the capital of the Assyrian Empire.

The Lord spoke to my heart and said, “I want you to go to Iraq, to ancient Ur, where Abraham left Babylon, and to Nineveh, and proclaim Isaiah 19 there. Say, ‘Thus says the Lord, I am beginning to fulfill this word.’” It’s beginning to happen, the highway will come forth.

I said, “That’s wonderful, Lord, but there’s Saddam Hussein in power, and he hates Israelis as the ‘little Satan’ and America as the ‘great Satan.’ If I come from Israel on an American passport, I could have problems. I’ll be happy to proclaim that in Jerusalem instead.”

The Lord said, “No, this particular one must be proclaimed physically on the spot where it will be fulfilled.”

Long story short, God miraculously opened a door for me to go to Iraq. I was in a hotel in Baghdad and didn’t know anyone. It was a men-only hotel in Muslim culture. We were sitting at these big tables at breakfast. I realized one man spoke English, and I started talking to him. He turned out to be Egyptian and eventually shared that he was a pastor.

I said, “Can we go outside and talk?” because in those days they had wires everywhere to listen. We went outside, and I said, “I’ve got to tell you something. You’re a pastor.” And he told me a little more, and I realized, wow, he’s not just a pastor. He’s really an intercessor.

I said, “I’ve got to tell you something. I’m American, but I live in Jerusalem, in Israel. And I felt like the Lord said to come here and proclaim Isaiah 19 that the Lord is going to start fulfilling this word in this land and in this region.”

His eyes got really big. He said, “Really?” He said, “God told me the same thing. I’d never met him before. Never met him. Meet him at the breakfast table at a hotel in Baghdad.” I mean it’s just crazy how God brought us together.

Now, in the year I believe about 2010 or 11, God said go into some of these countries and help build the highway through starting houses of prayer seminars.

So we went first to Antioch, ancient Antioch which is now called Antakia. And there we are praying over an Egyptian and part of her heart’s desire was to see a house of prayer come forth in her city.

Then we were in another city in Turkey and the Lord had told us to take our menorah. And God said if they didn’t get back their first love, he’d remove their candlestick. If they didn’t repent, he’d remove their candlestick. “And I believe you need to take a candlestick. You need to take a menorah there to Turkey and give it to them, as a sign that God’s going to restore light in Turkey.”

I thought, “Wow, that’s wonderful. I’ll go buy a new menorah and because I’m emotionally attached to this menorah we’ve lit for years and years and I’ll buy a new menorah and take it to them. That’s really great.” While I was praying, the Lord said, “You will not offer to me that which costs nothing.” He said, “I want you to give the menorah that’s been lit for years in Jerusalem and take it to them and give it to them.”

So, we’re at a house of prayer. The next photo here, if we can get—yeah, we’re at a house of prayer and this is Joseph Neber when he’s much younger and with us in that house of prayer and we that’s the menorah we took and they’re lighting it.

We said, “Is there someone from the signs of Isaac to represent the sons of Isaac?” And we asked is there also a son of Ishmael? And a son of Isaac and a son of Ishmael lit the menorah and prayed blessing over each other.

Then in a house of prayer in Beirut, Lebanon, the Holy Spirit started moving during a time that Patricia was leading worship and in such a way that people on their own, no one said to do this, came up and started saying their country had been in civil war for over 20 years. I believe something like at least 170,000 people had been killed in the war.

These people each represented a different faction in Syria. So one said, “I was a Shiite Muslim before I came to Jesus.” One said, “I was a Sunni Muslim before I came to Jesus.” One said, “I was a Maronite Orthodox Christian before I came to Jesus.”

Anyway, there were many different groups and they all asked forgiveness for their people and of each other. But it was just spontaneous. It was all the Holy Spirit that did it in the context of worship. I get his worship and prayer and what the Lord would do.

Then during the dedication of the house of prayer in Istanbul we met a man whose father was a Muslim who came to Yeshua in Mecca because He appeared to him.

He was looking for help. He beat his wife, drank, and he hoped he could get free. Jesus appeared to him and he said when he put his hand on me, he said, “You’ll not find help here. Follow me. I am the way, the truth, and the life.” He put his hand on his chest and he said, “I felt a fire burning there.” Then he went into a deep sleep and when he woke up in the morning, he thought, “What in the world was that?”

And he got up and looked in the mirror and there on his chest where he typically had lots of black hair, was a white handprint. Literally a white handprint. And he showed me, I mean, it’s gray now kind of around, but he showed me there’s still a white handprint there where Jesus touched him.

And I want to end with this Isaiah 60 here. I thought, what about the Arabian Peninsula? Because Isaiah 19, the Assyrians were the whole Middle East, but not the Arabian Peninsula. Then we found this scripture in Isaiah 60.

Herds of camels, he’s talking to Israel, will cover your land. Young camels of Midian and Epha. Now, camels in those days were the main means of business. So he’s prophesying there will be renewed business relationship between Midian and Epha.

Then he says all from Shiva which includes the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula and also Yemen. So something’s going to shift in Yemen. They may have sent a missile at us today, but we’re sending the gospel toward them.

He said some will come from Shiva, from Saudi Arabia, from Yemen bearing gold and incense and proclaiming the praise of the Lord. So I believe the day will come when we’ll see Saudis walking in the door. We’ll see Yemenis walking in the door, coming to bring praise and worship to the Lord in Jerusalem.

What he’s basically saying, worship will come from them and I will adore in my glorious temple. We don’t have time to go in further than that, but you can begin to search that out, but I believe there’s an Isaiah 19 highway, which is the Middle East, Egypt, and Israel. And there’s an Isaiah 60 highway, which is the Arabian Peninsula, waking up spiritually and bringing praise to the Lord in Jerusalem.

Our Prayer that God’s Work Will Continue

So, let’s close right now.