Hebrew Word Study – Everyone Receives – Yissa’ ישא Yod Sine Aleph

“Everyone shall receive your words.”  Most translators will not translate this as everyone, just they shall receive your words.  I was reading Jewish literature where the pronouns in Hebrew are not always as clear as to who or what the pronoun is referencing as it is in the English. Sometimes you need to closely examine the verb associated with the pronoun understand. In this case, the word receive gives us a hint. Who is receiving God’s words?  If you do a deep study of the word yissa from the root nasa’ you find many usages for this word.  However, there is an element of all-inclusiveness in this word. Thus, I believe the translators, like in King James, were correct to include the word “everyone” as that is implied in this word. To the Jewish sages, everyone includes those outside of Judaism.  God gave his Torah to all mankind.  Not exactly as He did with the Hebrews with smoke and fire from the top of Mt. Sinai but in their hearts.  All mankind has some knowledge of the Torah in their hearts.  The Jews were chosen to demonstrate the Torah to humankind.  We learn from Jewish teaching that the descendants of Esau were on Mt. Seir and God delivered his Torah on Mt. Seir to these descendants.  That is like saying God delivered His message to Russia as well as the United States, which he did and I will explain.

I believe when we get to heaven we are really going to be surprised at who is really up there.  People we never imagined would be in heaven because their theological beliefs so differed from us will be up there. They will be up there because they followed the Torah that God put in their hearts. God has a secret army all over the world, found in all different cultures and religious persuasions. We just need to stop putting a label on people and let God decide who are his sheep and who are not.  I firmly believe that if God opened our eyes to see who is praying for this nation and who He has put in key positions, we would be shocked. 

Back in 1934, there is a little-known event that we just don’t read about in our history books.  In fact, there is very little information on this.  It is simply known as the Business Plot, the Wall Street Putsch, or the White House Putsch.  What it was was an attempted coup d’état by powerful businessmen to use the military to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and install a dictator.  Retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, a medal of honor winner was chosen to lead the coup.

Businessmen frightened by fears of socialism and reckless spending which would result in inflation much like that of Germany at this time caused many to believe the only hope was to remove Roosevelt from office by force.  Fortunately, General Butler was a patriot and only agreed to lead the coup so he could prevent it from happening which he did. When he finally turned over all his evidence to the justice department he testified to Congress that he was promised an army of half a million veterans to back his attack.  Many were part of the bonus army who were already camped out in Washington DC demanding their bonus for their service during World War I.  This was an invisible army made up of jobless veterans who had families that were starving back home.  Men who have families that are going hungry with little hope of finding a way to feed them would be ripe for a revolution.  These were dangerous times for our democracy where this nation could easily have become a socialistic or more likely a communistic nation. Oddly, no one was ever convicted or imprisoned for this attempted insurrection and it was all quietly dismissed.

God was watching over this nation, Christians were praying.  There was a revival that was also sweeping this nation.  Many turned to God rather than revolution and our nation in a few years turned from a nation on the verge of total political, economic, and governmental collapse to one of the most powerful nations in the world. It was right at this time that the national prayer breakfast which the nation’s leaders and leaders from around the world came to pray was first organized and still continues to this day.  History will not call 1935 to 1945 a decade of a miracle but I do.  In the following years the United States reaped the fruits of its return to God with tremendous popularity and world leadership. Never in world history has a conquering nation been as humane to the losing nations as the United States.  Even after emptying their treasuries during the Depression, going deeply into debt to finance a war, the United States stilled spent money like a drunken sailor to help rebuild, restore and finance the nations that warred against them. Practically overnight our greatest enemies became our greatest friends. We demonstrated to the world the teachings of Jesus to love your enemy, to do good to those who despitefully use you to care for the widows and orphans. 

Now let’s jump back a couple of thousand years to a land much like the United States called Israel. I Kings 19:18: “Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.”  Israel was a Jewish nation like we are a Christian nation a nation that feared God and was an example of Judeo/Christian values.  History suggests that there were about 2 million people living in Israel during the time of  Elijah. Of that God said there were 7,000 who maintain their faith and did not bow to the foreign god Baal. That is only about 3.5% of the population. 96.5% sold themselves out to Baal, many just out of fear of the ruler’s Jezebel and Ahab.  Yet, God still protected that nation even when it was under the rule of Jezebel and Ahab. They won wars and their economy flourished except for those years that God sent a famine to turn the hearts of the people back to Him.  

Twenty-five hundred years later there is a nation called the United States that also is proclaiming to the world similar values yet ruled by those who worship another god than Jehovah. In the United States according to the recent census, there are about 333 million people in this country of which 205 million identify as Christian which is almost two-thirds of this nation, and about half of those claim to be evangelical.  That means that evangelical Christians or conservative Christians make up about 30% of the population of this country. That is a mighty powerful praying force. But that 30% is not the whole story.  That percentage does not include Catholics and Mormons.  I believe you will find true believers among the Catholics and even among the Mormons (hopefully those rocks you are getting ready to throw at me are made of Styrofoam).  I believe based upon that it is safe to say that at least 30% + of the people in this country are crying out to God on behalf of this nation. Believers in many other nations who recognize the role of the United States in this world are also praying for this nation.  

Now come on, if God blessed a nation when only 3.5% were seeking His face, then don’t you think that if 30% of a nation, not to mention believers all over the world who are praying,  are praying that maybe God will hear those prayers as well.  Hey, look at Russia.  When I was a child no Evangelical worth his King James Bible would declare that the Soviet Union would collapse, communism would end in Russia and definitely this atheistic country would never allow freedom of religion.  If I were to peer into the future back in the 60’s at the height of the Cold War and saw that the President of Russia would be wearing a cross around his neck, hobnobbing with the religious elite, lighting candles in homage to God, that there would be mass Christian rallies, that Billy Graham would preach to his largest audience in Russia and that some commentators would even say Russia was more of Christian nation than the United States, I would have believed I was looking at an alternative universe.  Such a thing would never happen in my lifetime and yet it did in just a matter of a couple of decades. Religious freedom had come to the most atheistic nation in history. 

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