If you are at all familiar with the Bible, Jonathan Cahn says, you’re familiar with the story of Jesus cursing the fig tree in Matthew 21. Jesus cursed the fig tree because He was hungry and found no fruit on it, only leaves.
Cahn said in a recent sermon there is a parallel between the fig tree and Israel, which for nearly two millennia, failed to produce the spiritual fruit that God so dearly desired. But then came the reestablishment of Israel as a nation in 1948, and Cahn says that the tree has returned.
And, he says, it—meaning Israel—is beginning to grow as God intended.
“When God spoke to Jeremiah, He spoke about the good figs and the bad figs,” Cahn says. “Those were actually the people of Israel. The king was a bad fig, and judgment was coming. What does that mean?
“What it would mean is that Israel is not only just coming back as a nation, but it will again produce fruit to God; believers, apostles of Messiah and disciples, and then the word could go forth again. That hadn’t happened for almost 2,000 years. But it’s happening again now. The fig tree is beginning to blossom.”
Cahn says through the prophet Hosea, God said the children of Israel would “abide for many days without king or priest.” But in these last days before Jesus’ glorious return, that scenario is beginning to change.
“In the last days, they will come, they will come, they will return to the Lord. They will come trembling to the Lord and to His goodness and to David their king, which is the biblical way of saying ‘Messiah.’ There was a first, but their main coming is at the end.
“What is the biggest part of the week for the Jewish people? The end, the Sabbath. They repent. What is the time of repentance in the Hebrew year? It’s the last part, in the autumn. The Jewish people are going to come back to the Lord in the end and we are already seeing the beginning of that. The fig tree is blossoming.”
Cahn says that the tree’s branches are a mirror of the tree’s roots, and obviously that a tree cannot bear fruit without its roots. What does that mean not only for Israel, but also , Cahn asks?
“You can only go up in the Lord as much as you go down in the Lord,” Cahn says. “God said be fruitful, but you can only be fruitful if you are rootful. Your fruitfulness is based upon your rootfulness and it’s dependent on it. Your fruits will not exceed your roots. It will equal it.
“Do you want to bear fruit? You’ve got to get down. You’ve got to get deeper. You’ve got to get in His presence. You’ve got to get deeper in His love, and when you do, you will bear the fruit of your life. Your life is a tree. God called you to bear a life of love, of joy, of gentleness, of peace, of goodness, of self-control and of faithfulness.
“Do you want to bear the fruits of love? Then, you’ve got to get into the roots of love. Get more rooted. You can’t give what you don’t have. You can’t give what you didn’t receive. A tree can only give what it received. You’ve got to get into God’s presence. You’ve got to start soaking up His love into your whole being; into your emotions, into your mind, into your heart, into your hurts, into your past, into your fears—into every part of your being—that’s how you’re going to change. A tree cannot do it on its own. All you need to do is receive and be the tree and let it happen. Focus on getting from God; focus on receiving; get good at it. When their comes a famine, you won’t wither because you are rooted in God.” {eoa}
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Shawn A. Akers is the online editor at Charisma Media.
