A Thrilling and Deeply Touching Testimony of the Signs, Wonders, and Miracles in the Life and Aliyah of a Messianic Jew.

I thought it good to declare the signs and wonders that the Most High God has worked for me. How great are His signs, and how mighty His wonders! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and His dominion is from generation to generation. (Dan 4:2-3)

"How incredibly humbling and utterly amazing it is for me to boldly declare that the Lord God of Israel has seen fit to visit me from time to time as I have traveled through the years of my life. Even from my childhood, He has declared His Almighty presence with me through an utterly amazing galaxy of signs, wonders, and miracles that have illuminated my being and punctuated my every pathway. Always during the times of my greatest need in those special euphoric moments when I have felt the tingling, intimate presence of His Holy Spirit--- He has never failed to provision me with the very personal sign, wonder, or miracle I have needed at that precise moment. From His heart to the depth of my awareness, He has always been there for me in this personal, special way to encourage, protect, redirect, admonish, or simply to remind me of His unfathomable love and presence.

"The book you hold in your hands is my humble offering to Him who sits on the throne and unto the Lamb. May this recounting of but a few from the galaxy of signs, wonders and miracles with which He has so graciously provisioned me over the years while holding me in the hollow of His hand, at least begin to give Him the glory due His name. May these words also encourage, build up, and otherwise bless the precious body of Yeshua and whomever else may read them." (Bob Fischer)

Foreword

Now also when I am old and grayheaded, O God, do not forsake me, until I declare Your strength to this generation, your power to everyone who is to come. (Ps 71:18)

For as long as I can remember, the Lord has visited me in a recurring dream:
a glorious vision of His almighty outstretched hand holding me, as a small child, curled up in its hollow, secure, utterly at peace in the protection of His love.

Now, in the autumn of my years, as I consider my life's journey thus far, I marvel at how, even in the midst of my innumerable failings and wanderings from His Way, He has been so absolutely faithful to His promise:

"...Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed," says the LORD, who has compassion on you. (Isa 54:10) NIV

I am a Messianic Jew, one of a tiny minority of the ethnic descendants of Jacob to whom, for reasons exclusively His own, the Lord God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has seen fit by His grace to provide with the indescribable gift of redemption and eternal life by first drawing me close to Himself and then enabling me to embrace the wondrous, once and for all sacrifice of His only son, Yeshua.

For all of the days of my life, even before I ever knew Him personally, I have been aware, sometimes keenly so, of His protective presence, His guiding hand, His knowledge of my every thought, His mindfulness of even the smallest detail of the seeming minutiae of my life.

Certainly, from time to time He has allowed me to fall, but only, by the strength of His loving hand, to rise up again, each time having grown in my knowledge of Him, renewed and enabled with sufficient strength to continue the life's journey He carefully and lovingly ordained for me even before He had formed the earth.

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him? (Ps 8:3-4)

How incredibly humbling and utterly amazing it is for me to now boldly declare in absolute truth the Lord God of Israel, He Who created the heavens and the earth and all that is therein, has indeed, in His unfailing love and mercy, seen fit to visit me from time to time as I have traveled through the years of my life. Even from the first memories of my childhood, He has declared His Almighty presence with me through an utterly amazing galaxy of signs, wonders, and miracles that have illuminated my being and punctuated my every pathway. Always during the times of my greatest need in those special euphoric moments when I have felt the tingling, intimate presence of His Holy Spirit; during those everyday times when He has had something very special or even urgent to show me, even while I was totally immersed in the things of this world never has He failed to provision me with the very personal sign, wonder, or miracle I have needed at that precise moment. From His heart to the depth of my awareness, He has always been there for me in this personal, special way to encourage, protect, redirect, admonish, or simply to remind me of His unfathomable love and presence.

By no means do I consider myself in any way unique in having received these truly amazing heavenly visitations. His Word abounds with the promise of His unqualified availability to all those who would simply seek Him. He would exclude none from the pouring out of His signs, wonders and miracles, each gloriously, and very personally bearing witness to His almighty shepherding and infinitely loving presence.

Not a single ethnic Jew, the chosen of His first calling; nor a single Gentile, who by a simple act of faith might be grafted into the sacred and infinitely nourishing Jewish roots of the Body of Yeshua absolutely none of these who diligently seek Him would He not so bless.

Seek the LORD and His strength; seek His face evermore! Remember His marvelous works which He has done, his wonders, and the judgments of His mouth, O seed of Abraham His servant, you children of Jacob, His chosen ones! He is the LORD our God; his judgments are in all the earth. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. (Ps 105:4-7, Jer 29:13)

There is, however, another dimension, another stark reality in this supernatural relationship between our Creator and us, the people of His hand. We live in the world, where satan reigns as prince. Thus we remain, in a very real and intimate way, in constant peril from the fallout of an unrelenting battle being waged in heaven, a battle that began in the Garden of Eden where man first sinned.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. (Eph 6:12)

It was there in the Garden, that God revealed His wonderful plan of redemption for all of His creation, a plan whose glorious conclusion will one day, soon I pray, be Yeshua's return to Israel.

Now, as we His Body wait for Him expectantly, we must be ever mindful that the enemy, satan and his legions of demons, have focused their every attention on two closely intertwined purposes. Never for a moment do they cease in their scheming to prevent the glorious second coming of our Lord Yeshua, all the while seeking at every turn to dismay, discourage and ultimately destroy His loving Body of believers, a Body that struggles to stay focused with excited anticipation upon Mount Zion.
Further, there is a clearly observable relationship between God's signs, wonders, and miracles; and the level of satan's counter attention. The more God blesses in this truly remarkable way, the greater are satan's efforts to dismay, discourage, and destroy. It is as if there were two synchronous supernatural rheostats: God's hand on one and satan's on the other.

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. (1 Pet 5:8)

Certainly our God has the awesome power to snuff out satan in even less of an instant than it took Him to create the entire universe. In His perfect wisdom, however, He chooses not to do so for now. I believe He thus allows the enemy to beset His people in order that He might teach them, mold them, and draw them ever closer to Himself. Such lifelong, spiritual refining the Word calls sanctification, a process that begins at the moment of our salvation in Yeshua and will continue until we finally meet Him face to face in glory.

I had a remarkable demonstration of this awesome, supernatural modus operandi just yesterday morning, when I took a break from my writing to stroll contemplatively about the streets of Tiberias. I often do this when I am seeking specific guidance. In this case I was pondering whether I should limit this recounting to just the good and pleasant things, thus showing my life in Him as a sort of divinely-filled "basket full of cherries," or, alternatively, if I should punctuate these wonderful, divine visitations with some of the stark and sobering satanic attacks over the years that have been aimed at my spiritual destruction. The Lord certainly made His desires in this regard abundantly and painfully clear. At the very moment I prayerfully sought His specific guidance on this point, I stepped off a curb, tripped, and literally fell flat on my face against the hard asphalt. Let me hasten to say that it wasn't the Lord who caused me to sustain a few painful abrasions and some lingering discomfort. Rather, it was He who simply allowed satan or one or more of his demons to give me a good solid shove just when it was needed. There is a central message in this.

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. (Rom 8:28)

Even as I grapple for some better understanding of this knowledge that is too wonderful for me to attain even as I greatly yearn to take up my eternal residence in the mansion Yeshua has prepared for me in His Father's house, His Words cry out to the depth of my being:

Give to the LORD, O families of the peoples, give to the LORD glory and strength. Give to the LORD the glory due His name; bring an offering, and come into His courts. (Ps 96:7-8)

Recently, I was very greatly blessed with a message brought by Reuven Ross, one of our pastors at Carmel Assembly in Haifa. One of Reuven's points especially spoke to my heart: As we strive to serve the Lord, we are called to give Him all the glory, all the glory due His mighty name. We must ever be aware of how satan so often steps in, encouraging us to keep just a little tiny bit of the glory for ourselves.

And so, dear reader, my heart quickens at the words of an angel:

Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people saying with a loud voice, "Fear God and give glory to Him....."
(Rev 14:6-7)

The book you hold in your hands is a humble offering to Him who sits on the throne and unto the Lamb. May this recounting of but a few from the galaxy of signs, wonders and miracles with which He has so graciously provisioned me over the years while holding me in the hollow of His hand, at least begin to give Him the glory due His name. May also these words, offered in His unfailing love, encourage, build up, and otherwise bless the precious body of Yeshua and whomever else may read them.

RRF
Tiberias, Israel
January, 2001

Copyright 2011 by Raymond Robert Fischer