Fifty Days of Prayer for the National Election 2012 – Day 9

Day 9 September 26th
Focus:  America’s alliance with Israel 
Today is the Jewish Day of Atonement – Yom Kippur
“This is to be a lasting ordinance for you: On the tenth day of the seventh month you must deny yourselves and not do any work— because on this day atonement will be made for you, to cleanse you. Then, before the Lord, you will be clean from all your sins.”  (Leviticus 16: 29-30) 
Yom Kippur is probably the most important holiday of the Jewish year. It is a day set aside to “afflict the soul,” to atone for the sins of the past year. According to Jewish tradition, God inscribes each person’s fate for the coming year into a book, the Book of Life, on Rosh Hashanah, and waits until Yom Kippur to “seal” the verdict. During the Days of Awe, a Jew person tries to amend his or her behavior and seek forgiveness for wrongs done against God (bein adam leMakom) and against other human beings (bein adam lechavero). The evening before and day of Yom Kippur are set aside for public and private petitions and confessions of guilt (Vidui). At the end of Yom Kippur, each Jewish person prays that his sins have been forgiven by God. 
Yom Kippur is a complete Sabbath; no work can be performed on this day. It is a complete, 25-hour fast beginning before sunset on the evening before and ending after nightfall on the day of Yom Kippur. Most of the holiday is spent in the synagogue, in prayer. The services end at nightfall, with the blowing of the tekiah gedolah, a long blast on the shofar. It is customary to wear white on the holiday, which symbolizes purity and calls to mind the promise that sins shall be made as white as snow.  (Isaiah 1:18) 
Pray: for the Jewish people of our nation to receive the revelation of forgiveness of sins through Christ’s death and resurrection.   
Today’s prayer focus for this election:  America’s alliance with Israel 
America’s support of Israel and the naming of Jerusalem as her capitol has been a hotly debated issue this election season. 
Background: Why America’s support of Israel is important to Christians 
The survival of the Jewish people is a miracle of God. The return of the Jewish people to the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is a miracle of God. The remarkable victories of Jewish armies against overwhelming odds in successive battles in 1948, and 1967, and 1973 are clearly miracles of God. The technological marvels of Israeli industry, the military prowess, the bounty of Israeli agriculture, the fruits and flowers and abundance of the land are a testimony to God’s watchful care over this nation and the genius of this people. Yet what has happened was clearly foretold by the ancient prophet Ezekiel, who, writing at the time of the Babylonian captivity, declared this message for the Jewish people concerning the latter days.  
“For I will take you out of the nation; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back to your own land… I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you… to follow My decrees and be careful to keep My laws. You will live in the land I gave your forefathers; you will be My people and I will be your God. I will save you from all your uncleanness.”  (Ezekiel 36)
Evangelical Christians support Israel because we believe that the words of Moses and the ancient prophets of Israel were inspired by God. We believe that the emergence of a Jewish state in the land promised by God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was ordained by God. We believe that God has a plan for Israel, a nation which He intends to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth. The God who spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai is our God. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are our spiritual Patriarchs. Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel are our prophets. King David, a man after God’s own heart, is our hero. The Holy City of Jerusalem is our spiritual capital. And the continuation of Jewish sovereignty over the Holy Land is a further bulwark to us that the God of the Bible exists and that His Word is true. God is responsible for returning Jerusalem to the world stage. He is doing so for His own purposes – and He is not subject to the behavior of Israel or the threats of Israel’s enemies. 
“’And I will return My people Israel out of captivity, and they will rebuild the waste cities and inhabit them, and I will plant them upon their land, and they shall never again be plucked up out of their land which I have given them,’ says the LORD your GOD.” (Amos 9:14-15) 
(these words were taken from a Pat Robertson speech) 
Prayer Points (pray for Israel as the Holy Spirit leads you): 
  • ·       Humanists believe the universe is silent and all that matters is how we human beings interpret the silence. The humanist does not see any need to single out the land of Israel, because neither any land nor any nation have any special significance.  There is no God to give any land special significance.
 ·       Theists and New Age pantheists also do not see significance in the land of Israel. All that matters is the divine spark within every individual. The physical location of any person is totally irrelevant. However, Scriptures tell a different story. The Bible presents us with a written record that God chose an individual who was told to leave his home and who was guided to go to another land promised to his descendants. By choosing Abraham and by promising to him the land of Canaan, God Himself created a new identity which involved a specific land.  Israel’s relationship to God, the Giver, is the basis of their identity.
 ·       The important principle of utter trust in God is reflected in the very name of the nation Israel. The name, Israel, originated in the Jabbok River incident in which God changed Jacob’s name to Isra-el, “struggling with God.” Jacob was totally powerless to face the dangers of the next day without God’s help. In response to Jacob’s desperate plea for His blessing, God gave him a new name including “El”, the Semitic name of God. This name reflects total rejection of independence from God. This means that Israel is not really “Isra-el” apart from a sense of dependence on God. The name does not mean to “struggle against God” but “struggling with God” to convince Him of our need for His blessing. The Bible demonstrates that seeming powerlessness coupled with prayer is stronger than military coercion. This separates us from Moslems who believe that military coercion is an appropriate vehicle for spreading their faith.
 ·       It is significant that Israel is the only nation in the United Nations that mentions God in its very name. God chose to label Israel. This means that even if Israel would like to forget its God-given identity and its destiny to be a dependent people, God Himself does not allow it.
 ·       God’s choice of the People of Israel and the land of Israel was confirmed and established when He sent His Son Jesus to be a Jew in the land of Israel. God promised that the house of Jacob would never be utterly destroyed, that there would always remain a remnant. Accordingly, He came down Himself as Emmanuel to enter into that identity of “Israel.” Thereby He insured the indestructibility of the Jewish identity; even torture and death were revealed as impotent by the resurrection of His Son, the ultimate Jew, Jesus. By choosing Abraham, God had created this identity; by naming Israel He had defined it; and by sending His Son, He confirmed it.
 ·       As descendants of Abraham and Israel, Jews of today still have the ongoing responsibility to be God’s witness in the world. To maintain this identity is a blessing according to the Scriptures; to attempt to be no different from any other nation is a curse.
 ·       The Bible warns that Israel alone among the nations has a particular God-given destiny that is different in kind from any particular God-given destinies that other nations may have. No other nation was chosen to be a blessing to all other nations, to be the home of the World Redeemer, and to be the location of His Return. This understanding clearly separates Jews and Christians from Muslims who believe that it is a stain on the honor of Islam to have lost control of the land after 1,300 years of Moslem rule. Moslems believe that some Jews can live in the land, but that Muslims have a religious obligation to regain control of the land.
 “Fear not, O Jacob My servant, says the Lord, for I am with you. I will make a full end of all the nations to which I have driven you, but I will not make a full end of you, but correct you in measure, yet I will not leave you wholly unpunished.”(Jer. 46:28)
 “Has God cast away His people? God forbid! … God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew.”(Rom. 11:1-2)
 Note: On September 23rd Jews from all persuasions – Orthodox, Ultra-Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform gathered together all over the world to pray for Messiah to come and deliver them.  
 Here is the prayer they used:
“Master of the Universe, we the children of Israel ask for Mashiach [Messiah] to redeem us, now and with mercy, from exile and all suffering, to reveal your Name in the world and to bring peace.”
“Thanksgiving ― first celebrated in 1621, a year after the Mayflower landed ― was initially conceived as a day parallel to the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur; it was to be a day of fasting, introspection and prayer. No Christian community in history identified more with the People of the Book than did the early settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who believed their own lives to be a literal reenactment of the Biblical drama of the Hebrew nation… these émigré Puritans dramatized their own situation as the righteous remnant of the Church corrupted by the ‘Babylonian woe,’ and saw themselves as instruments of Divine Providence, a people chosen to build their new commonwealth on the Covenant entered into at Mount Sinai.” (Gabriel Sivan in The Bible and Civilization)
 We, the people of the State of Florida, being grateful to Almighty God for our constitutional liberty, in order to secure its benefits, perfect our government, insure domestic tranquility, maintain public order, and guarantee equal civil and political rights to all, do ordain and establish this constitution.  (Preamble to the Constitution of Florida)