July 1999 Personal Letter

Dear Friends,

My mind is full of our Prophecy Conference which took place Memorial Day weekend. I was very gratified with the caliber of our audience and the sheer amount of Bible we were able to teach.

As you know from our past letters, Dr. Tom McCall and Todd Baker, our two ministry theologians, joined me in the teaching. Our special guest and perhaps the most fascinating speaker of all was Moishe Rosen, the Founder of Jews for Jesus, one of twentieth-century Christianity’s remarkable men. Moishe’s wisdom, Tom’s pinpoint accurate theology, Todd’s youthful vigor, and my jokes (and perhaps knowledge of Israel) all combined to provide quite a terrific and varied program. I’m not bragging when I say that; I believe it was the Lord’s intention that we undertake this mission, and it was a total success.

It was so successful that we are going to have a repeat performance in September. The weekend we have chosen is September 18–19 for the reason that the Fall Feasts occur right then. The Day of Atonement will be September 20 and the Feast of Tabernacles September 25. Our participants will be totally knowledgeable on the meaning of these two important feasts when they return to their communities. They will be super-witnesses to their Jewish friends, or timely and effective Sunday School teachers, and the like. After all, as a friend explained to me, B.I.B.L.E. means “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.”

Someone may say, “Why don’t we hold it before the Feast of Trumpets and gather in all three fall feasts?” But frankly, I keep the Feast of Trumpets empty and unencumbered every year in case of the Rapture of the Church! While it is not a certainty, I have always thought that the Lord might come on a Feast of Trumpets because He has created a pattern of accomplishing a climactic action on each successive Feast Day. He was crucified on Passover, buried on Unleavened Bread, raised on First Fruits, and He sent the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. No event of such spiritual magnitude has occurred on a Feast of Trumpets, and of course the Rapture calls for a trumpet blast (“… with the trumpet call of God” [1 Thess. 4:16] or “… at the last trumpet” [1 Cor. 15:52]).

Therefore, if the Rapture does occur this year on September 10, the Feast of Trumpets (as I alluded to in our April letter), then we’ll hold our conference in Heaven, and you can all come! For those going on our Fall tour, which departs at the beginning of September, we will certainly teach the full significance of the Feast of Trumpets, and we’ll know the Lord will find us there in Jerusalem if He chooses that day to come for His Church.

We will have the same set of speakers for the September Prophecy Conference, but the theme will be “The Feasts of the Lord” and of course we’ll teach all seven feasts. As many of you know from reading our ministry’s best-selling book, The Seven Feasts of Israel, God issued quite a calendar not only commemorating the ways of worship but also predicting prophetic events. I believe it even pertains to the development of each human baby, step by step, during a pregnancy (get the book if you don’t believe that one).

I want to lay special emphasis on the Biblical knowledge of our audience. I go to prophecy conferences all the time, including some very “important” ones, but I really have never had better questions or more stimulating discussions than I have with our people. I sincerely believe that the information given to us by the Lord, which we impart on television, in books, in these letters, and even in music, has made a tremendous difference in the knowledge of our audience. We had a two-hour session of simply answering questions, and the four theologians taken together were hard-pressed to even get through the very intelligent prophecy questions submitted in writing by our crowd. The conference was small in relation to most—about 200 people attended—and that made for a more intimate time of fellowship for all.

I realize that there is some expense involved in travel, admission fees, etc. (we do not ask for offerings at our conferences), but I don’t think a single person who attended this conference felt that he overspent for what he received, and that was my goal. So if you want to partake of the next conference, we can accept your registration immediately. An enrollment form is included in this letter.

I learned something at this conference, and I learned it from a line I myself wrote more than ten years ago. We screened “Beloved Thief” for our audience, and as I watched the familiar lines and listened to the songs, something new occurred to me which may be very obvious for some of you but it really struck me. There’s a quick line in the script where an old lady in the marketplace counsels the young bridegroom that when he pours a cup of wine for the bride, he is promising to sacrifice for his love, “While you are pouring the wine, you’re telling her you are willing to sacrifice to have her as your bride.” I had always known that Jewish bridegrooms proposed with a cup of wine, and there is such a cup under the canopy at every Jewish wedding. The part that was new to me has to do with the sacrifice involved. Wine in the New Testament is blood (“This is my blood of the New Testament …” [Matt. 26:28] the Lord said at the Passover table). Is each bridegroom in effect pouring out his blood as a symbolic gesture of sacrifice for his bride in the manner that the Lord poured out His blood for us?

And then in the Jewish ceremony, the cup is placed on the floor and the bridegroom breaks it with his foot. Various meanings are given for this Jewish ceremony, the main one being that it is a memory of the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD even at our happiest moments, such as a wedding. But rather, is it not that once we have taken the cup of the Lord we will drink no other wine nor accept other worldly cups, but wait always faithfully for Him?

Now, as to our tour, never again will you read your Bible in exactly the same way after our Deluxe Tour, September 4–15. It is designed to visit all of the scriptural locations in the Holy Land. From the Sea of Galilee and the Mount of the Sermon, to the Upper Room, the Garden Tomb, and the Mount of Olives, you will have pictures in your mind for the rest of your life as you study the great teachings of our Lord. The Grand Tour extension leaves for Israel on September 1 and meets up with the Deluxe Tour in Jerusalem on September 5. We will stay in a luxurious five-star hotel on the Dead Sea, and from there we visit the beautiful Negev Desert, En Gedi, Mitzpe-Ramon’s Crater and Avdat, the largest Nabatean city in the Negev. You may take the optional trip to Petra, a city carved out of a rose-red mountain, overnighting at the beautiful resort at Eilat on the Red Sea. During our extended tour, we will see all of Israel’s four seas—the Mediterranean, the Sea of Galilee, the Dead Sea, and the Red Sea! Touring Israel is truly a life-altering experience.

Our prophecy special is in the works for a September prime-time airing. We previewed parts of it to our conference attendees Memorial Day weekend. Any help you can give us with this very expensive undertaking is tremendously appreciated by all of us with the ministry. You are the most valuable resource we have in doing the Lord’s work. God bless all of you.

And please remember to pray for the peace of Jerusalem!

Your messenger,