Should we worry about idols to other gods? Or should we be more concerned about the idols in our hearts that keep us divided from our brothers and sisters in our Creator’s covenant?
Deuteronomy 6:4-9; 1 Corinthians 8:1-6; Hebrews 11:1-6; Malachi 2:10, 4:4-6
Click here to listen to the podcast:
Angus Wootten is a person I would very much have liked to meet. My interaction with his wife Batya has been very encouraging and uplifting over the past several years, but I never had the opportunity to connect with Angus. He has now departed this life to enter a well-earned rest. It’s time to honor to this brother who devoted his life to the calling of the Kingdom of our Lord. That is why I am glad to share the tribute my friend John Conrad has written about him.
I first met Angus Wootten along with his wife Batya when they visited our community in the Utah west desert in 1989. Batya had written a couple of books, The Olive Tree of Israel and In Search of Israel, which piqued my Dad’s interest. He invited them to our celebration of Pesach in 1989 and a long and wonderful friendship was born.
Angus attacked life with energy and gusto. He loved our home-grown Red Pontiac potatoes and instantly began to formulate plans for us to grow them and export them around the country. His zest for life infected everything he did. He served for many years in the US Armed Forces and retired as a lieutenant colonel.
While in the Armed Forces he served in Korea. While flying to Seoul for some R&R their plane suddenly developed engine trouble. Undaunted, Angus donned his parachute and jumped out of the plane. After a harrowing descent and a hazardous trip through the unfamiliar countryside, he finally made it to Seoul. There he found out his buddies had played a practical joke on him—there was nothing wrong with the plane and he was the only one who had jumped.
Angus and Batya are in many ways the father and mother of the Two House Movement. When Batya began to see the importance of Israel in Biblical prophecy she realized that Israel is composed of two houses with a common destiny but two separate paths to that destiny. Together with others they founded Messianic Israel Alliance which later became the Alliance of Redeemed Israel. Sadly they lost many friends over this revolutionary understanding and became the target of malicious rumors and slander. Neither ever returned the evil poured out upon them and they have remained faithful to this day.
Angus was known as the “Colonel” amongst his friends. He was not afraid to take a stand for the truth as he saw it. I remember one conference we had here in Utah where I wanted someone to speak but Angus disagreed because this man was holding services on both Sabbath and Sunday. He saw this as dangerous compromise and I saw it as being flexible. As the conference was being held in my home territory, I had the final word. The man came to the conference and gave a wonderful talk about his wife dying in Africa on the mission field. The indigenous people they had served yearned to have her buried in Africa but her family in America desired her remains to come home. Finally, they compromised by burying her heart in Africa and allowing her body to come home to America. It was an emotional, compelling sermon. Angus came up to me afterward and said “That is the best talk I have ever heard.”
With Angus’s passing, a giant tree has fallen in the Restoration Movement. But as Yeshua said, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” None of us have any idea how many seeds Angus and Batya are responsible for scattering over the earth. But we know the harvest will be great.
The saga of the coming Kingdom animated Angus. He noted how Luke says in Acts 1 that the resurrected Messiah appeared “to them over a period of forty days and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God.” I can hear him thundering that we know what Yeshua must have been saying because the disciples’ last question was “Will you at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel?”
The colonel favored action over meditation. One of his famous messages concerns what he calls the “exit interview” with God. His greatest fear was that our legacy would be “butt prints in the sand.” We have lost a brother and warrior. Batya has lost her faithful companion and friend. But over in glory, the colonel is rounding up the troops and preparing to take the hill.
Angus passed away on Monday, July 6, at the age of 91. Please visit his memorial page at Osceola Memory Gardens.
via A Tribute to Angus Wootten, by John Conrad – B’ney Yosef North America
What is the big deal about Israel, and why should Christians care? Those are questions this new series seeks to address. In this opening episode, we take a brief look at what the Bible says. This is more than an issue of supporting the Jewish people and the state of Israel; it’s actually a question of identity.
via Why Care About Israel? Part 1 – Current Events Simplified – YouTube
When do God’s people turn to Him? While we desire to cling to Him at all times, it is in times of trouble that this desire becomes a compelling need – a need to cry out to Him for deliverance, to ask Him to show us where we have sinned and turned from His righteous ways, to seek His forgiveness, and to learn from Him how to correct those things that separate us from His heart, and divide us from one another.
The world is in a season of distress. How shall we get through this trying time?
Many around the world, both from the Christian and the Jewish sides of Israel’s covenant family, are sensing the need to cry out to the Lord God in this season. As a way to enter into this process, B’ney Yosef North America is observing the week of July 5-11, 2020, as a time of fasting and repentance for our sins of division, discord, injustice, and failure to walk together in love.
Why now? It is a lesson we have learned from our Jewish brethren at this time. July 9 is the 17th day of the Hebrew month of Tammuz, the Fast of the Fourth Month of Zechariah 8:19. This fast day begins a time known as the Dire Straits, a three week period ending on the 9th of Av, the Fast of the Fifth Month. This was the time the Babylonians breached the walls of Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple of God, removing His visible presence from His holy city, devastating the land He cares for, and dispersing His covenant people of Israel to the nations. Ever since then, Jews have fasted and mourned, not merely for themselves as a people, but for the nations of the earth, to whom Israel is a witness of the Most High God.
Our call for prayer and fasting in this week of 17 Tammuz is the beginning of a season of repentance from now until Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, on September 28, 2020. We are joining with other prayer initiatives throughout this season, and we invite you to do the same.
Do we truly want to see our Father’s Kingdom come and His will done on earth as it is in heaven? Then let us humble our hearts, bow our knees, and seek Him together.
Prayer and Repentance Initiatives
The great thing about going to Winchester, Kentucky, is the opportunity to reconnect with good friends like Ken Rank. He asked me last week to record a conversation for United 2 Restore on the topic of “Teshuvah,” a Hebrew term often translated as repentance. It seems our Heavenly Father is calling people from all across the spectrum of His covenant body to enter into a season of prayer, repentance, and even fasting to seek reconciliation with Him and with each other. And why is that? Maybe because we need to do this to find the way through the global crises confronting us.
Please click here to listen to Teshuvah on United 2 Restore
