‘Church is a suffering—
before it’s a glory!’

…Dear saints—it would take another three nights just to give you a glimpse of what our experience in community has meant for twenty-seven, twenty-eight years.
The testing. The frustration. The defeat. The anguish of soul. The misunderstanding. The misrepresentation. The confusion...
You never knew that there were so many opinions that God’s people could have at one time, and each has a scripture to validate it!
And, we’re supposed to be one mind, one heart, one soul, one spirit?!
What is that—magic?! Is God going to wave a wand over us and we’ll come into that? Or, are we going to come into it realistically and truly by walking this out together and suffering those times of misunderstanding, confusion, charges, and accusations, and…that you have patiently to bear.
In love.
With one another.
In love…with one another…AND speak the truth and come to a place where we are one as He is one. That the world might know that the Father has sent Him.
Church is a suffering before it’s a glory! And unless it’s a glory it cannot be to the Jewish people what it must in the Last Days.
So, we have to be realistic and know this is going to be tough—and the world has not prepared us. It has prepared us for privacy. It's prepared us to spare us rather than to expose us.
And, we don’t want that kind of suffering.
And, I’ll tell you that it’s a suffering of an inordinate kind.
I’ve been kicked at, spit at, shoved—I mean, who knows what’s ahead for me in New York? I mean physically.
But, I tell you that the worst suffering in my thirty-seven years as a believer was from the church—and in the church. And in that very body - in community - to which I have given myself sacrificially for a longer period of time than ever I have lived in New York.
And, be called a ‘traitor’ and called ‘an enemy to the gospel’ by the people for whom I have sacrificed.
And to bear…THAT!
There’s a cross, dear saints. And, the issue of the Jew compels us to come to it.
Aren’t you grateful? If it were not for the issue of Israel and the Last Days witness that we must extend in palpable, real mercy—we would get away with murder.
And, we could have gone on with service after service and visiting speakers and enjoyed the whole thing and thought that this is what it’s about.
Only the day of Eternity would reveal how deluded we were and how much we had missed what the faith, in fact, is:
The issue of the Jew is God’s provision for the church—as well as for themselves!
That we might BE the church and the church that will meet that test not only will succor the Jew but will find themselves at the same time by that very thing equipped to be a bride to the Bridegroom…

- Onalaska, Washington (2002)